Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Population Dynamics of Modern Self-Help/Mutual Aid Organizations

该项目研究1955年至2000年期间民间部门组织人口动态，特别是自助/互助组织。 组织的出生率和死亡率的人口生态学模型已经相对成功地应用于私人和政府部门，但在合法性和竞争的关键变量的测量存在争议。 公民部门提供了一个战略机会，可以从声誉外部性和资源差异化竞争的角度重新定义合法性。 该项目从百科全书、原始资料和国税局记录中收集关于自助/互助组织的出现、增长、衰落和持续的数据，并将这些信息与这些组织的人口、财务和从属关系特征联系起来。 此外，它还从期刊和联邦赠款登记册中获取有关组织的声誉数据。 动态建模使用事件历史方法，负二项和泊松回归，潜曲线技术应用于数据。 研究结果显示了合法性和竞争对非营利组织生存的影响程度。

This project studies organizational population dynamics in the civil sector, specifically of self-help/mutual aid organizations between 1955 and 2000. Population ecology models of the birth and death rates of organizations have been applied relatively successfully to the private and governmental sectors, but controversies exist over the measurement of the key variables of legitimacy and competition. The civic sector provides a strategic opportunity to redefine legitimacy in terms of reputational externalities and competition in terms of resource differentiation. The project gathers data on the emergence, growth, decline and persistent of self-help/mutual aid organizations from encyclopedia, sourcebooks, and IRS records, and links this information to demographic, financial, and affiliation characteristics of the organizations. In addition, it draws reputational data on the organizations from journals and federal registers of grant awards. Dynamic modeling using event history methods, negative binomial and poisson regression, and latent curve techniques are applied to the data. The results show the extent of the influence of legitimacy and competition on organization survival in the non-profit sector.