Chapter 05

Question 1

coercive forces

Answer 1

External pressures such as legal requirements exerted on an organization to adopt structures, techniques, or behaviours similar to other organizations (p. 192)

Question 2

collaborative network

Answer 2

An emerging perspective whereby organizations allow themselves to become dependent on other organizations to increase value and productivity for all (p. 179)

Question 3

generalist

Answer 3

An organization that offers a broad range of products or services and serves a broad market (p. 187)

Question 4

institutional environment

Answer 4

Norms and values from stakeholders (customers, investors, boards, government, etc.) that organizations try to follow in order to please stakeholders (p. 188)

Question 5

institutional perspective

Answer 5

A view that holds that, under high uncertainty, organizations imitate others in the same institutional environment (p. 188)

Question 6

institutional similarity

Answer 6

The emergence of common structures, management approaches, and behaviours among organizations in the same field (p. 191)

Question 7

interorganizational relationships

Answer 7

The relatively enduring resource transactions, flows, and linkages that occur among two or more organizations (p. 173)

Question 8

legitimacy

Answer 8

The general perspective that an organization’s actions are desirable, proper, and appropriate within the environment’s system of norms, values, and beliefs (p. 188)

Question 9

mimetic forces

Answer 9

Under conditions of uncertainty, the pressure to copy or model other organizations that appear to be successful in the environment (p. 191)

Question 10

niche

Answer 10

A domain of unique environmental resources and needs (p. 184)

Question 11

normative forces

Answer 11

Pressures to adopt structures, techniques, or management processes because they are considered by the community to be up-to-date and effective (p. 192)

Question 12

organizational ecosystem

Answer 12

A system formed by the interaction of a community of organizations and their environment, usually cutting across traditional industry lines (p. 173)

Question 13

organizational form

Answer 13

An organization’s specific technology, structure, products, goals, and personnel (p. 184)

Question 14

population

Answer 14

A set of organizations engaged in similar activities with similar patterns of resource utilization and outcomes (p. 183)

Question 15

population ecology perspective

Answer 15

A perspective in which the focus is on organizational diversity and adaptation within a community or population or organizations (p. 183)

Question 16

retention

Answer 16

The preservation and institutionalization of selected organizational forms (p. 185)

Question 17

selection

Answer 17

The process by which organizational variations are determined to fit the external environment; variations that fail to fit the needs of the environment are “selected out” and fail (p. 185)

Question 18

specialist

Answer 18

An organization that has a narrow range of goods or services or serves a narrow market (p. 187)

Question 19

struggle for existence

Answer 19

A principle of the population ecology model that holds that organizations are engaged in a competitive struggle for resources and fighting to survive (p. 186)

Question 20

variation

Answer 20

Appearance of new organizational forms in response to the needs of the external environment; analogous to mutations in biology (p. 184)