ABSTRACT
In its early years organizational behavior gave little attention to biological perspectives. The two visible exceptions were a paper by Mason Haire (1959), then at the University of California at Berkeley, and the work of Donald Campbell (see Baum and McKelvey 1999) at Northwestern University. Neither sparked either research or theoretical development subsequently within organizational behavior, in spite of the use of both mathematical models and biological analogies to growth. In contrast, the later development of a similar approach, based on an established underpinning in sociology, by Michael Hannan (Stanford) and John Freeman (Berkeley) provoked a major impact, and an outpouring of research. The role of timing and the zeitgeist seem important here, but so does the power of the ideas themselves.
