Inertia, Density and the Structure of Organizational Populations: Entries in European Automobile Industries, 1886-1981
研究了组织种群密度对进入率的影响如何随种群年龄变化，提出种群层面的惯性源于制度化和结构发展，并用1886-1981年欧洲五国汽车工业数据验证了模型。
Existing theories of density dependence in organizational evolution treat the key processes as timeless functions of density. This paper revises the theory by specifying that the effects of density on legitimation and competition change systematically as organizational populations age. It argues that these changes in effects reflect population-level inertia due to institutionalization and the development of various forms of population structure. The proposed model of these processes implies a set of complex interactions between density and population age in effecting vital rates in organizational populations. These hypotheses are tested with data on entries of firms into the automobile indus tries of Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, and Italy during 1886-1981. These tests generally support the revised model. The pattern continues to hold when entry rates in each country are allowed to depend upon density in the whole set of countries, following Hannan et al. (1995).