Density dependence in organizational mortality: legitimacy or unobserved heterogeneity Export

@article{petersenkoput91, abstract = {Recent research in the population ecology of organizations focuses on the density of organizations and their mortality. The central result of these studies is that the mortality rate decreases as organizational density increases, at least up to some density, after which the mortality rate increases. The decreasing part of the mortality rate is attributed to the increasing legitimacy of the organizations as density increases in the early history of the population. The increasing part is attributed to increasing competition among organizations. We claim that the decreasing part of the mortality rate can be explained by a simple, plausible mechanism--unobserved heterogeneity. Since unobserved heterogeneity is pervasive in most data sets, the mortality rate should decrease as the density of organizations increases, at least until competition occurs. In two simulation studies we find unobserved heterogeneity can produce both negative age dependence and negative density dependence. When we control for the previously unobserved variables, these effects are no longer significant. Future investigations of the relationship between legitimation, organizational density, and mortality rates should collect direct measures of legitimation, rather than inferring legitimation from a model.}, author = {Petersen, Trond and Koput, Kenneth W.}, citeulike-article-id = {2677369}, citeulike-linkout-0 = {http://www.jstor.org/stable/2096112}, journal = {American Sociological Review}, keywords = {demography, ecology, legitimacy}, month = {June}, number = {3}, pages = {399--409}, posted-at = {2008-04-16 11:02:01}, priority = {2}, title = {Density dependence in organizational mortality: legitimacy or unobserved heterogeneity}, url = {http://www.jstor.org/stable/2096112}, volume = {56}, year = {1991} }

TY - JOUR ID - petersenkoput91 L3 - citeulike-article-id:2677369 N2 - Recent research in the population ecology of organizations focuses on the density of organizations and their mortality. The central result of these studies is that the mortality rate decreases as organizational density increases, at least up to some density, after which the mortality rate increases. The decreasing part of the mortality rate is attributed to the increasing legitimacy of the organizations as density increases in the early history of the population. The increasing part is attributed to increasing competition among organizations. We claim that the decreasing part of the mortality rate can be explained by a simple, plausible mechanism--unobserved heterogeneity. Since unobserved heterogeneity is pervasive in most data sets, the mortality rate should decrease as the density of organizations increases, at least until competition occurs. In two simulation studies we find unobserved heterogeneity can produce both negative age dependence and negative density dependence. When we control for the previously unobserved variables, these effects are no longer significant. Future investigations of the relationship between legitimation, organizational density, and mortality rates should collect direct measures of legitimation, rather than inferring legitimation from a model. IS - 3 JF - American Sociological Review EP - 409 TI - Density dependence in organizational mortality: legitimacy or unobserved heterogeneity VL - 56 SP - 399 KW - demography KW - ecology KW - legitimacy AU - Petersen, Trond AU - Koput, Kenneth PY - 1991/06// UR - http://www.jstor.org/stable/2096112 ER -