ABSTRACT
The core of the chapter focuses on developing a set of generic featurebased group forms that can be used to study variation within group populations. These generic forms are defined in advance by scholars, to reflect theoretically salient key features that can be readily mapped against ‘real’ groups based mostly on external observations. With these sets of ‘group organizational forms’ in hand, I then illustrate the value of this approach by utilizing them to test the isomorphism assumption that is central to population-based organizational studies (and related group studies). Without wishing to rehash the discussion in early chapters, this analytical task is necessary for two related reasons. First, the group literature has not explicitly addressed the issue of variation in group form, and while there is a degree of agnosticism with respect to variation in form (at least as defined in this volume), the recent turn to population-ecology inspired work explicitly encourages an assumption of limited variation within populations of like-groups. Second, the organizational studies literature, on which the group literature is increasingly (and productively) drawing (witness population ecology work), has for a long time assumed that there will be isomorphism: a standardization of form in a given field. It is therefore crucial to tackle the assumption of limited variation in group populations early and head on. Based on data from a population of UK environment groups, I establish that groups do embody different organizational forms or configurations at any single moment, even when they outwardly rely upon the same environmental conditions. Groups experiencing the same basic conditions survive in different forms: there is likely no single recipe to survival. This suggests scholars would benefit from a more explicit emphasis on puzzling over diversity in form. The chapter proceeds in the following manner. To provide a more concrete sense of what a set of generic feature-based forms might look like, the first part of this chapter reviews the state of the party literature in respect of its featurebased use of organizational form. In the subsequent two parts I develop the feature-based approach with respect to groups: I address the admittedly basic (but surprisingly difficult!) challenge of identifying a set of basic group ‘forms’ that might guide empirical analysis. I first develop a reference form for interest groups, and then outline variations to this reference form. The rest of the chapter then deploys these concepts to demonstrate one possible empirical application: probing organizational variations among a population of like-groups (to test the isomorphism proposition).
