Organizational Form, Population Dynamics, And Institutional

An investigation is made of whether the relationship among foundings, population dynamics, and institutional changes in a population of voluntary social service organizations differs for specialist (single-domain) and generalist (multiple-domain) organizations. The population studied included the 451 voluntary social service organizations that came into existence in the metropolitan Toronto area during the period 1970 to 1982. Overall results showed that the founding patterns of specialist and generalist voluntary social service organizations appear to be significantly different. While the curvilinear effects of lagged foundings, disbandings, and density and the effects of changes in the institutional environment are significant for specialist foundings, they are not significant for generalist foundings. Lagged institutional changes and density have significant nonlinear interaction effects for specialists but not for generalists.