This paper proposes a novel theoretical framework to model the dynamics of organizational mortality. The main theoretical contribution is a clarification of the relations between organizational fitness, endowment, organizational capital and mortality hazard. If the mortality hazard is a function...

We develop a unifying framework to integrate two of organizational sociology’s theory fragments on categorization: typecasting and form emergence. Typecasting is a producer-level theory that considers the consequences producers face for specializing versus spanning across category boundaries....

Why do organizations generally lose their competitive edge as they get older? Recent theory and research on the dynamics of audiences and categories in markets sheds some new light on issues of organizational obsolescence.

This paper introduces modal logics to a sociological audience. We first provide an overview of the formal properties of this family of models and outline key differences with classical first-order logic. We then build a model to represent processes of perception and belief core to social...

We develop a unifying framework to integrate two of organizational sociology's theory fragments on categorization: typecasting and form emergence. Typecasting is a producer-level theory that considers the consequences producers face for specializing versus spanning across category boundaries....

This paper extends a formal theory of structural aspects of organizational change initiated by Hannan, Polos, and Carroll (2002a, hereafter HPCa). This analysis focuses on the implications of limited foresight of the cascades of consequences of architectural changes. Foresight is generally...

This paper develops a formal theory of the structural aspects of organizational change. It concentrates on the significance of changes in an organization's architecture and culture, each represented as a code system. A change is significant when it prompts other changes and generates a cascade...

We investigate how sociological argumentation differs from the classical first-order logic. We focus on theories about age dependence of organizational mortality. The overall pattern of argument does not comply with the classical monotonicity principle: adding premises does not overturn...

Building on a formal theory of the structural aspects of organizational change initiated in Hannan, Polos, and Carroll (2002a, 2002b), this paper focuses on structural inertia. We define inertia as a persistent organizational resistance to changing architectural features. We examine the...