The Evolution of Collective Strategies among Organizations

Abstract

Many organizations are made up of other organizations that have decided to act collectively as with research and development consortia, industrial alliances, trade associations, and formal political coalitions. These collective organizations can be characterized by their differing strategies: some are general in scope, while others specialize on a more narrow purpose. What explains the prevalence of generalism and specialism among collective organizations? We develop an ecological model in which collective organizations compete over member organizations. Assuming that an organization joins a collective when its objectives match that of the collective, our model predicts a generalism bias in the ecology of founding and growth among collective organizations. This outcome is predicted to be path dependent, however, emerging over time according to relatively minor differences in initial conditions. These predictions are supported in an analysis of founding and growth rates among US R&D consortia, and the model helps to account for the numbers, sizes, and strategic diversity of these consortia.

Why Trade Associations Matter: Exploring Function, Meaning, and Influence

“…Once formed, TAs are fairly enduring, and become the forum through which firms identify and solve new problems (Barnett, 2006). Over time, however, TAs with broadly defined interests may be replaced by, or transform into, TAs that define their boundaries around a narrower shared interest, reflecting the difficulty of coordinating collaboration among dispersed interests (Aldrich, Staber, Beggs, & Zimmer, 1990;Barnett, Mischke, & Ocasio, 2000). Despite what would seem to be an environment in which associations strategically compete for members, this body of research suggests that associations have norms discouraging overt competition over members and interest domains (Aldrich et al, 1990).…”

(Un)bounding the Meta-Organization: Co-Evolution and Compositional Dynamics of a Health Partnership

“…We make two points here. First, as Barnett et al (2000) argue, the growth dynamics of collective action systems-R&D consortia in their case-is where the generalist meta-organization would have an advantage over those with narrower bases-their reference point is the range of functions and activities rather than member identities, but our case narrative suggests these may be closely related. They propose 'contagion' as the mechanism by which meta-organizations would recruit new members.…”

“…The boundary between organizations and their environment is moved, but a new boundary and set of relationships both within the meta-organization and between the meta-organization and its environment are produced. Other accounts of organizational change, including the co-evolutionary perspective, recently reexamined by Child (2003, 2008), frame dynamics essentially in terms of the mutual and reciprocal influence between an organization as a collective effort or strategy and its environment (see also Barnett et al 2000;Selsky 1998). We move on to discuss institutional environment and membership composition as sources of dynamics using a third lens-that of patterned transitions through time, i.e., history.…”

Managing the Online Student Experience: An Ecological Model

“…Ecology is concerned with interrelationships between different living things, and between living things and their environment (Tatnall and Davey 2004). In addition to dealing with the natural environment however, the principles of Ecology have been used to deal in many other areas to deal with the complexity of those areas (Star and Griessemer 1989;Richards and Sanford 1992;Podolny and Stuart 1995;Nagarajan and Mitchell 1998;Simon 1998;Barnett, Mischke et al 2000;Grzywacz and Fuqua 2000;Havelka, Koh et al 2001;Sutcliffe, Chang et al 2003;Johnston 2006). These techniques have also been used in education and curriculum development to produce worthwhile results (Tatnall 1997;Tatnall and Davey 2003;Tatnall and Davey 2004;Tatnall and Davey 2005;Tatnall, Singh et al 2008;Tatnall and Davey 2009).…”