Fundamentals of Level Three Leadership

53. The Ecological Model

Concept

Warren Boeker at Columbia University¹¹ and others have been studying what they call the ecological model of organizational behavior and strategy. Essentially, they apply concepts from the fields of ecology and evolution to describe firm behavior within an industry. Organizations, like species, live in an environment and that environment affects the ability of the species or organization to thrive and persist. In nature, for example, studies have shown that the wolf and mouse populations of the northern tundra are highly dependent on each other for survival. If the wolves eat too many mice, the wolves will starve. If the wolves don’t eat enough mice, the mice will over populate and over graze their grass food and ...