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
- Building the iron cage: determinants of managerial intensity in the early years of organizations, American Sociological Review 64(4), 527 to 547, 1999
- The demography of corporations and industries, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 2000
- Labor pains: change in organizational models and employee turnover in young, high-tech firms, American Journal of Sociology 106(4), 960 to 1012, 2001
In Organizational Structures
Known for
Population ecology
Ideas
Structural inertia. With Freeman, Hannan argued that selection favors organizations whose structures have high inertia, because reliable and accountable performance requires reproducing structure with high fidelity; that inertia rises and death rates fall with age; that attempts at reorganization increase death rates; and that reorganization sets the liability-of-newness clock back toward zero. Caveat: Tests show effects vary by type of change.
Founders' employment models as an imprint. The employment model a founder brings shapes how much management and administration a start-up later builds, so structure is path dependent from founding. Caveat: Silicon Valley technology start-ups only.
Organizational Structures that draw on Michael T. Hannan (17)
- Adhocracy (innovative organization)
- Boundaryless organization
- Cellular organization
- Co-determined organization
- Distributed (all-remote) organization
- Divisional by customer or market segment
- Federal organization
- Front-back organization
- Hybrid structure
- Hypertext organization
- Internal market organization
- Process (horizontal) organization
- Professional partnership (P2 form)
- Simple structure
- Team of teams
- Team-based organization
- Transnational and multidimensional organization