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Organizational Demography Research in the United States

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The Organization Ecology of Interest Communities

Part of the book series: Interest Groups, Advocacy and Democracy Series ((IGAD))

Abstract

As a general term, demography refers to the study of populations. Organizational demography is the term used to denote the study of organizational populations. Outside of political science, organizational demography is a wide-ranging field that encompasses the study of workforce demography, internal organizational demography, and what many organizational ecologists call corporate demography. Within political science, organizational demography studies fall almost exclusively into this last category. It is these sorts of studies that are the focus of this chapter. Corporate demography was virtually invisible in political science 20 years ago. Today it is a burgeoning but still small field of inquiry that has begun to contribute to our understanding of interest representation in the United States. In this chapter, I provide an overview of the literature on interest group organizational demography in the United States. I wish to note upfront that my overview is far from definitive. In fact, it is the opposite of definitive; my intention here is to introduce the reader to organizational demography research in the United States. Within the field of political science, this research is not plethoric; it is quite limited. My hope is that my introduction here will inspire interest in the subject, interest that will lead to a perusal of the organizational demography research within political science and perhaps without as well.

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Authors
  1. Anthony J. Nownes
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Pennsylvania State University, USA

    David Lowery

  2. Australian National University, Australia

    Darren Halpin

  3. University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, USA

    Virginia Gray

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© 2015 Anthony J. Nownes

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Nownes, A.J. (2015). Organizational Demography Research in the United States. In: Lowery, D., Halpin, D., Gray, V. (eds) The Organization Ecology of Interest Communities. Interest Groups, Advocacy and Democracy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137514318_2

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