populations of organizations

Hannan, 1977, 935-936 - ""Just as the organizational analyst must choose a unit of analysis, so must he choose a system for study. Systems relevant to the study of organization-environment relations are usually defined by geography, by political boundaries, by market or product considerations, etc. Given a systems definition, a population of organizations consists of all the organizations within a particular boundary that have a common form. That is, the population is the form as it exists or is realized within a specified system.""

Populations of organizations make up the ecosystem of the business enterprise. Though the types of organizations in this ecosystem include customers, suppliers, competitors, aligned enterprises, institutions, etc., the organizational forms make-up the populations of organizations. See organizational populations.

Economist's parallel to 'populations of organizations' is 'industry,' where organizations are considered similar if they serve the same customer base (demand) offering similar products (function). Within an industry (an economic population of firms), organizational ecologist view might reveal many different forms of organization. In this sense, populations of organizations are relatively independent of industrial classifications of organizations.