The Demographic Metabolism of Organizations: Industry Dynamics, Turnover, and Tenure Distributions

Abstract

In this paper, I develop and test an ecological model of the antecedents of organizational demography, focusing on the aspect of organizational demography that has been linked most strongly to individual and organizational outcomes: tenure distributions. I propose that organizational ecology, the context within which organizations operate and the dynamics of that context, influences rates of organizational turnover and thereby affects organizations' tenure distributions. Organizational founding, dissolution, and merger drive employees into and out of firms, and this ecologically induced mobility will affect organizations' tenure distributions. Moreover, great size and age will buffer organizations from the turbulence caused by ecological processes. Analysis of organizations in one industry shows that ecological processes have strong, direct influences on managerial turnover and systematic indirect influences on the entry and exit of managers and the average tenure and tenure dispersions of management groups.