60 Years of March and Simon’s Organizations: An Empirical Examination of its Impact and Influence on Subsequent Research†

Ralf Wilden, Jan Hohberger, Timothy M. Devinney, Fabrice Lumineau

Journal of Management Studies · 2019 · Volume 56 · Issue 8

Abstract

We provide an analytic and systematic review of the impact of March and Simon’s seminalOrganizationson management research and discuss the book’s value for current research and propose future applications of it. Building on bibliometric and text-mining approaches, our empirical analysis reveals that althoughOrganizationswas contextually based in the industrial milieu of the 1950s, its concepts have found ongoing resonance with scholars. Further, we find that much of this resonance appears to be driven by the ability of scholars in different ‘schools of thought’ to find useful insights from March and Simon’s generalized theoretical structure. However, we also observe that scholars have been selective in their usage of ideas from the book over the last 60 years. Based our analysis, we propose a particular set of future research areas, including a focus on new organizational forms and extending March and Simon’s ideas to multi-level research, which can benefit from more holistically drawing onOrganizationsand connect its original ideas to address current management problems.

Keywords

behavioral theory, bibliometrics, Carnegie School, Herbert Simon, innovation, James March, literature review, organizations, text mining

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