Organizational Ecology and Its Implications on Organizational Ecological Innovation

Introduction

The debate on organizational ecology surrounds the mechanisms underlying the effects of age on life mechanisms (Barron, West & Hannan, 1994; Hannan, 1998). There are many debates on the conceptual, theoretical, and methodological issues related to organizational ecology and little efforts to integrate them in an emerging research field (Wholey, & Brittain, 1986). The debates around organizational ecology regarding the mechanisms of age and their effects on life changes (Barron, West, and Hannan,1994; Hannan,1998). There are many organizational ecology studies on the effects of organizational age on life and behavior of organizations changes. Organizational ecology is an evolutionary theory that describes structural changes in organizations (Sisaye, 2021)

Organizational ecology develops an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary framework of sustainable development (Carayannis & Campbell, 2010). Organizations possess information-processing routines and technological trajectories used to facilitate incremental innovation (Tushman and Anderson, 1986; Henderson, 1993). Organizations are generating, developing, and communicating socio-ecological knowledge, norms, sentiments and innovation sensitive for the entrepreneurs and the stakeholders in the scientific and technological inventories and socio-ecological projects that create a macro-effect in social and ecological dimensions. There is a trend of applying organizational ecology in business research (Liu et al., 2022).

The fundamental differences with the organizational ecological view and the economic approach are the empirical account for organizational survival. The is a link between organizational survival and innovation with an indirect link between innovation and survival. Organizational survival and innovation outcomes are not always transparent. The critical differences between organizational ecological theory and organizational economic approaches are the identification of the relevance of competition and mutualism within and between environmental niches. The indicators for voluntary environmental regulation elements are the environmental and ecological certifications, the environmental information disclosure, and the environmental supervision.

There is an increasing gap between organizational innovative capabilities and the technological frontiers, which is the opportunity for new organizations to align their internal routines with technological development. It needs to be studied the joint effects of age and innovation outcomes in organizational growth and mortality models. Organizational innovation becomes more incremental and process innovation increases in relation to product innovation.

This analysis on organizational ecology and its implications on organizational ecological innovation aims to study the assumption that the theoretical and conceptual framework of organizational ecology is positively associated with ecological innovation in organizations. To achieve this objective, it reviews the conceptual and theoretical elements of the organizational ecology leading to explain some of the main implications in organizational innovation. Finally, some conclusions are presented.