A Study of the Form of Organizations: Toward an Integrative Framework of Population Ecology and Institutionalism

Does the form of organizations tend to show diversity or homogeneity? This paper begins with two contrastingquestions: ‘Why are there many organizational forms?’ and ‘Why are organizations similar?’ Population ecologyand institutional theory represent different lenses through which theorists use for interpreting theseorganizational phenomena. Each paradigm offers compelling concepts and arguments for supporting their ownperspectives even though they seem to lead to contradictory results. This conceptual paper is an attempt to clarifythe fundamental divergence of ecological and institutional approaches and proposes an integrated perspective forfuture empirical studies.