Where Theories of the Population Ecology of Organizations Go Wrong and How to Fix Them

Prof. Michael Heaney presents Darren Halpin, Australian National University

The organizational ecology literature has proven to be influential in the organizational studies field, and has also been taken up to some extent in the broader social science disciplines (eg. political science). However, it has also be open to some significant criticisms. In this talk I review some of these points of criticism and examine how they might be addressed. 

The talk will engage with themes such as whether the ecology in population ecology is more than a metaphor, the roles of competition/cooperation and adaptation/selection as the foundations of population dynamics, and the nature of niches and what they partition. Drawing examples from the field of political science, I look at how we might further develop the ecological approach in ways that speak more directly to the organizational world we see in front of us every day.