This proposal is to develop and test mathematical models of the growth and decline of organizations. Five models, differing in details of processes internal to organizations and of their external surrounding, are proposed. The goal is to understand forces shaping organizational structures over long time spans, and to provide a theoretical structure for explaining how or- ganizational change produces changes in society. The work grows out of previous work by the PI and collaborators. PI will evaluate models by comparison with data on the founding, growth, and mortality of diverse industries: labor unions, banks, life insurance firms, and breweries. The project seeks to develop a set of theories and methodological tools cutting across specific types of organizations, for use in further studies of organi- zational ecology.
