Minimalist Organizations: Vital Events in State Bar Associations, 1870-1930

This paper uses national data on the growth of state bar associations to develop organizational theory in three respects. First it refines the theory of organizational vital events through a distinction between minimalist and nonminimalist organizations. Second, it develops conceptually and empirically the interplay of time (age, cohort, and period) and size in explanations of the founding and failure of associations. Third, it tests various population and economic theories of vital events in the national population of state bar associations from 1870-1920. We find that minimalist organizations differ systematically from most organizations in the literature by (1) having distinctive rates of failure but not of founding, (2) displaying a liability of newness for the population of associations, but none for individual associations, and (3) having a liability of smallness but not a liability of newness for individual associations. We obtain significant results for environmental models of founding and for time and size models offailure. The empirical analysis suggests the heuristic value of discriminating between minimalist and other organizations in population and resource theories of organizations.