To what extent has the ecological theory been used in
contrast or in combination with institutionalism in
shaping activities in your organization or any other you
are familiar with?
 Ecology is the study of the relationships between
plants, animals, people, and their environment, and
the balances between these relationships., by
Freeman and Hannan (1989).
 Organizational ecologists seek to understand the
distribution and survival of organizations across
different environments (Hannan and Freeman, 1977:
936).
 This theory published in 1979, has influenced many
psychologists in terms of the manner of analysing the
person and the effects of different environmental
systems that he encounter. This theory has since
become an important theory that become a
foundation of other theories’ work
 Institutional theory explains how myths, meaning,
and values, rather than efficiency, autonomy, and
exchange, may drive organizational behaviour.
Institutional theorists use three processes of
isomorphism: coercive, mimetic, and normative

Coercive processes are concerned with
acquiescence to the demands of powerful
organizations;
Mimetic processes are concerned with modeling
of other organizations to reduce uncertainty; and
 Normative processes arise from
professionalization mechanisms to explain the
adoption and diffusion of innovation
combination
 Ecological theory has been used in combination with
institutionalism because both emphasize the role of
legitimacy although they disagree about its basis,
purely cognitive for ecologists.
 legitimacy and organizational form, and seek
to explain change and stability in organizational
systems.
 tend to conduct longitudinal analysis of
original
data on collections of organizations – populations in
the case of ecologists and
fields in the case of
institutionalisms.
 Population
Ecology and Institutional theories
focusing at the organizational level have a common
assumption that organizations are tightly coupled with
environments thus mechanism of change is naturalselection rather than organizational adaptation
In contrast
 An assumption of institutionalization is that
organizations tend to conform to the norms and
expectations of the institutional environments, Changes
among organizations tend to produce isomorphism
While ecology
The population ecology theory assumes that
organizations have inertial forces which limit their
capability to adapt to environmental changes and
these inertial forces are both internal and external
constraints.
 Ecological theory has been used in combination with
institutionalism because both emphasize the role of
legitimacy although they disagree about its basis,
purely cognitive for ecologists.
 Ecological theory has been used in contrast with
institutionalism because ecologists value parsimony
and generality while institutionalisms prefer richness
and contextual specifity.
 Havemen (20008) argued that ecologists strive to
identify broad regularities across populations.
Institutionalist attempt to offer highly contextualised
and nuanced depictions of organisations or fields
.Ecologists concern for parsimony has led them to
follow a tight normal science trajectory while
institutionalist concern for richness and contextual
specifity.Ecological theory has been used in contrast
with institutionalism.