Organizational Demography

Abstract

What constitutes survival and termination of pub-67 lic organizations, really? In the field of business 68 administration there seems to be little discussion 69 on what is survival and what is not. Simply put, an 70 organization is either in business or it is not. This 71 lack of ambiguity in business literature allows for 72 a dichotomous definition and "biological" meta-73 phor in studying the mortality of government 74 organizations, referring to the "mortality," i.e., 75 "life" and "death," of organizations. The "popu-76 lation ecology" approach even sees competing 77 organizations in a given area as a "species" that 78 can be studied to explain firm mortality and orga-79 nizational founding, as well as population growth 80 and change. Ever since Kaufman (1976) adopted 81 the biological metaphor 40 years ago this ecology 82 idea has been applied increasingly on populations 83 of public sector organizations as well. 84 Yet studying termination of public organiza-85 tions defies such a strict, dichotomous definition 86 of what constitutes survival. Being "dead" or 462 adolescent agencies for termination (which fits 463 with our hypothesis 2). 464 Surprisingly, the effects of economic down-465 turns also point in other directions. Carpenter 466 and Lewis (2004) challenge conventional wisdom 467 with their finding that budgetary pressure 468 decreases survival chances for public organiza-469 tions (H13). In fact, their budgetary surpluses 470 increase the hazards, and deficits make termina-471 tions less likely. The short-term cost of organiza-472 tional termination would make such decisions 473 unfavorable in times of austerity (Carpenter and 474 Lewis 2004, p. 222). By contrast, James et al. 475 (2015) found that budgetary pressure increases 476 termination hazards whereas Park (2013) and 477 Boin et al. (2016) tested the same factor but 478 found no significant effects. 479 Insulation from executive interference (arm's 480 length status -H5) can make organizations more 481 likely to survive than those created in proximity to 482 the President, but not all studies agree (Lewis 483 2004 vs. Boin et al. 2010). Disagreement also 484 exists regarding newness (H1): being green can 485 both help the organization to survive and prove to 486 be a liability (see Table 1). 487 Conclusion and Future Research 488 Explanations for the survival of public organiza-489 tions abound. This chapter offered an assessment 490 of each potential factor by comparing different 491 research findings. The factors that were confirmed 492 in several studies could together form an inte-493 grated model of organizational survival in the 494 public sector. Such an integrated model would 495 predict that regulatory tasks, creation by law, and 496 being older than 12 years makes organizations 497 most likely to survive, but by no means hazard-498 free. In any case, hazards for public organizations 499 increase when political winds change and new 500 incumbents enter office. Rightwing executives 501 may be more likely to terminate public organiz...