The theory of system-dependent organizational evolution is a recent attempt to provide a coherent analytical framework for exploring the feedback mechanisms that link changes in numbers of organizations in a population to changes in patterns of resource availability. According to the theory, organizations are both consumers as well as producers of resources. This view has at least two implications for the way in which we think about the relation between organizations and their environments. The first is that the carrying capacity for organizational populations cannot be constant over time. The second is that the carrying capacity changes as a function of density - the number of organizations in a population. If the feedback view behind the theory is correct, the level of organizational density and the level of relevant resources are simultaneously determined. So far, the theory of system dependent organizational evolution has been validated only through computer simulation. In this paper we use data that we have collected on the population of US television station during the period 1940-2000 to subject some of the core propositions of the theory to empirical test. The preliminary results that we report in this paper provide strong support for some of the main predictions of the theory.
Organizations coevolving: System dependence in the population of U.S. commercial television stations
PERRETTI, FABRIZIO
2006
Abstract
The theory of system-dependent organizational evolution is a recent attempt to provide a coherent analytical framework for exploring the feedback mechanisms that link changes in numbers of organizations in a population to changes in patterns of resource availability. According to the theory, organizations are both consumers as well as producers of resources. This view has at least two implications for the way in which we think about the relation between organizations and their environments. The first is that the carrying capacity for organizational populations cannot be constant over time. The second is that the carrying capacity changes as a function of density - the number of organizations in a population. If the feedback view behind the theory is correct, the level of organizational density and the level of relevant resources are simultaneously determined. So far, the theory of system dependent organizational evolution has been validated only through computer simulation. In this paper we use data that we have collected on the population of US television station during the period 1940-2000 to subject some of the core propositions of the theory to empirical test. The preliminary results that we report in this paper provide strong support for some of the main predictions of the theory.
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