Toward An Institutional Ecology of Organizational Founding

Abstract

In this study, we demonstrate how the ecological and institutional characteristics of organizational niches affect the likelihood of organizational foundings. We describe and measure key ecological, institutional, organizational, and spatial properties of organizational niches. Our theoretical framework emphasizes how the effects of ecological and institutional processes vary both within and between nonprofit and for-profit sectors and across levels of geographic aggregation. An analysis of day care center founding in Metropolitan Toronto supports our main theoretical expectations. Thus studying multiple dimensions independently and interactively provides a richer, more comprehensive treatment of the context of organizational founding.