This paper describes a dynamic analysis of technological advances among hard disk drive (HDD) manufacturers in the areal density of their products across the history of the industry. The study provides (additional) evidence supporting a view of technological racing with leap-frogging rather than...

Many organizational populations display increasing variation over time in characteristics thought to be central to survival, as we show here for hard disk drive producers. We develop a simple model that might account for this pattern. In it, technological advance follows a trajectory consistent...

Organizational ecologists investigate the dynamics of organizational populations. Ecological analysis has focused explicitly on organizational founding and mortality processes in these populations with notable success, but has lagged behind in its understanding of organizational growth, which...

Sociologists and other social scientists have long recognized that certain economic transactions involve more than a simple trade of goods or services for money. A long-standing theme in economic anthropology and sociology emphasizes the symbolic or moral character of certain economic exchanges...

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...

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...

Although it might be considered the domain of many research areas, self-employment has not been studied vigorously. We draw upon the ideas of related areas to develop a sound design for the study of self-employment. Using retrospective career life-history data from West Germany, we model the...