Communications - April 2009

V

viewpoints
DOI: 10.1145/1498765.1498778
technology Strategy
and management
Strategies for difficult (and
darwinian) economic times

How the axiom of survival of the fittest applies in the context of a global economic downturn.

CharleS dar Win haS hadcon-siderable impact not only on the field of biology but also on theories of industry evolution and management. Within sociology departments and business schools, for example, during the 1970s and 1980s there emerged a strain of “population ecologists” that continues to influence much of the research on organizations and industries today. These scholars see a Darwinian process of survival that occurs at the “population” (the industry) level and has little to do with the actions (or inactions) of individual managers and firms. The argument, in simple form, is that most companies are unable to adapt to major change and that successful companies are mainly those whose structural characteristics happen to match well with demands of the new environment.^a For example, most mainframe computer companies were unable to adapt to small machines and distributed computing, and so

they disappeared. General Motors and other automobile makers that cannot efficiently operate at low production volumes and make money with small, fuel-efficient vehicles with tiny profit margins will face the same fate as vacuum tube producers that could not adapt to transistors.

Let me say up front that I do not completely agree with the population ecologist view. I have worked with many companies since the 1980s and believe the actions of managers had an important impact on performance and survival. I also teach in a business school where, we presume, it is worthwhile teaching

PhotograPh by mark mclaughlin

a The early most important works on this topic are Michael Hannan and John Freeman, “The Population Ecology of Organizations,” The American Journal of Sociology 82, 5 (May 1977), 929–964; Howard Aldrich, Organizations and Environments, Stanford University Press, Palo Alto, CA, originally published 1979, classic edition 2008. See also Michael Hannan and John Freeman, Organizational Ecology, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1989.