The Ecological Interdependence of Emergent and Established Organizational Populations: Legitimacy Transfer, Violation by Comparison, and Unstable Identities

Stanislav D. Dobrev (), Salih Zeki Ozdemir () and Albert C. Teo ()
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Stanislav D. Dobrev: Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago, 5807 South Woodlawn Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 60637
Salih Zeki Ozdemir: Australian Graduate School of Management, University of New South Wales, Gate 11, Botany Street, Randwick, NSW 2031, Australia
Albert C. Teo: NUS Business School, National University of Singapore, 10 Kent Ridge Crescent, Singapore 119260

Organization Science, 2006, vol. 17, issue 5, 577-597

Abstract: We know that organizations of different but related kinds greatly influence each other’s evolution. Although empirical findings abound, the theories behind them are still being developed. We advance a model of ecological interdependence between emergent and established populations. Our model is based on three main ideas. First, we consider related populations to be those that overlap in identity and resource space and that simultaneously exhibit competitive and mutualistic relationships, the latter leading to legitimacy transfer. Second, we build on the idea that legitimated forms codify prescriptive sanctions for deviations from identity blueprints, and predict that when an emergent population overlaps with an established one in identity space, its early proliferation will manifest violations of established social identities and will trigger prescriptive sanctions. Third, we rely on the notion of a focused identity to argue that organization-level changes affect external perceptions of the population’s collective identity, and hamper legitimacy. Analysis of the survival rates of financial cooperatives in Singapore---a population overlapping the identity and resources of commercial banks---confirms our predictions.

Keywords: organizational identity; ecological interdependence; legitimation and competition; density dependence; community ecology (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (21)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:ororsc:v:17:y:2006:i:5:p:577-597

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