Works
- The population ecology of organizations, American Journal of Sociology 82(5), 929 to 964, 1977
- The liability of newness: age dependence in organizational death rates, American Sociological Review 48(5), 692 to 710, 1983
- Structural inertia and organizational change, American Sociological Review 49(2), 149 to 164, 1984
In Organizational Structures
Known for
Population ecology
Ideas
Age dependence in death rates. In labor unions, semiconductor manufacturers, and newspapers, death rates show a liability of newness that differs between dissolution and absorption by merger, and that survives controls for size. Caveat: Measures survival, not structure.
Population ecology. Co-author with Hannan. Caveat: A theoretical argument. Read in its abstract only.
Structural inertia. With Hannan, argued that selection favors organizations whose structures are reliable and accountable, and therefore inert, that older organizations have more inertia than younger ones, and that structural reorganization sets the liability of newness clock back toward zero. Caveat: Only its abstract and passages of a reprint were read. Tests show effects vary by type of change.
In this section, “read” means read by the Organizational Structures series: where a line says a work, or part of one, was not read, the series did not read it.
Organizational Structures that draw on John Freeman (12)
- Boundaryless organization
- Cellular organization
- Co-determined organization
- Divisional by customer or market segment
- Federal organization
- Front-back organization
- Internal market organization
- Process (horizontal) organization
- Professional partnership (P2 form)
- Simple structure
- Team-based organization
- Transnational and multidimensional organization