ABSTRACT
This chapter examines important type of termination among larger organizations is the merger process. National census figures revealed steadily increasing numbers of organizations but considerable variation in their sizes, whether measured as total employees or financial resources. As a result, little reliable data from an earlier era are available about such basic demographic statistics as the numbers and types of organizations, their sizes, and the rates at which this population changed over time. Organizational censuses count all firms and establishments as equivalent businesses, but individual organizations vary tremendously in size. Explaining organizational change then requires examining how hypothesized socioeconomic and political forces, especially those arising from the external environment, compel rearrangements among the basic structural relations. More structural approaches consider how social and institutional conditions shape entrepreneurial efforts and the ultimate successes or failures of organizational startups. Several empirical investigations of the 1980s merger mania revealed how noneconomic factors shaped takeover activity.
