“We argue that in order to deal with the various inertial pressures the adaptation perspective must be supplemented with a selection orientation. We consider first two broad issues that are preliminary to ecological modelling. The first concerns appropriate units of analysis. Typical analyses of the relation of organizations to environments take the point of view of a single organization facing an environment.”

—  Michael T. Hannan

Source: "The Population Ecology of Organizations," 1977, p. 933

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Michael T. Hannan 12
US-American sociologist of Stanford University 1943

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“A population ecology perspective on organization-environment relations is proposed as an alternative to the dominant adaptation perspective. The strength of inertial pressures on organizational structure suggests the application of models that depend on competition and selection in populations of organizations. Several such models, as well as issues arising in attempts to apply them to the organization-environment problem, are discussed.”

Michael T. Hannan (1943) US-American sociologist of Stanford University

Source: "The Population Ecology of Organizations," 1977, p. 929; Article abstract

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“Organizations need to undergo fundamental changes, both in order to adapt to the new business environment and to become ecologically sustainable.”

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Michael T. Hannan (1943) US-American sociologist of Stanford University

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Eric Trist (1909–1993) British scientist

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“Contingency theory is guided by the general orienting hypothesis that organizations whose internal features best match the demands of their environments will achieve the best adaptation.”

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W. Richard Scott (1992). Organizations: rational, natural, and open systems. p. 89

“This paper introduces a concept of organizational ecology. This refers to the organizational field created by a number of organizations, whose interrelations compose a system at the level of the field as a whole. The overall field becomes the object of inquiry, not the single organization as related to its organization-set. The emergence of organizational ecology from earlier organization theory is traced and illustrated from empirical studies. Its relevance to the task of institution-building, in a world in which the environment has become exceedingly complex and more interdependent, is argued.”

Eric Trist (1909–1993) British scientist

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Source: "Differentiation and integration in complex organizations," 1967, p. 1

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