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A Blau space primer: prolegomenon to an ecology of affiliation

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  • Miller McPherson

Abstract

This paper describes an ecological model of the behavior of social entities in a property space defined by sociodemographic dimensions. The model departs from the standard population ecology model in that it measures dimensions of the niche space, and assembles populations into a community. In this model, the time and energy of human individuals are the resource consumed by the social entities. While the model was originally developed for voluntary organizations, the paper argues that this model can be applied to a very wide variety of social phenomena, including firms, groups, associations, events, cultural artifacts, markets, social circles, collectivities, occupations, social movements, roles, identities, attitudes, beliefs, lifestyles, institutions, meanings, human cognitive structure, disease and other socially transmissible quantities. The paper concludes with some speculations based loosely on the model. Copyright 2004, Oxford University Press.

Suggested Citation

  • Miller McPherson, 2004. "A Blau space primer: prolegomenon to an ecology of affiliation," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 13(1), pages 263-280, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:indcch:v:13:y:2004:i:1:p:263-280
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    Cited by:

    1. Christine A. Bachrach & S. Philip Morgan, 2013. "A Cognitive–Social Model of Fertility Intentions," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 39(3), pages 459-485, September.
    2. Balázs Kovács & Glenn R. Carroll, 2010. "Niche width and scale in organizational competition: A computational approach," Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, Springer, vol. 16(1), pages 29-60, March.
    3. César García-Díaz & Gábor Péli & Arjen van Witteloostuijn, 2020. "The coevolution of the firm and the product attribute space," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(6), pages 1-25, June.
    4. Nicolas L. Harder & Matthew E. Brashears, 2020. "Predicting organizational recruitment using a hybrid cellular model: new directions in Blau space analysis," Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, Springer, vol. 26(3), pages 320-349, September.
    5. Hernan Mondani, 2018. "The underlying geometry of organizational dynamics: similarity-based social space and labor flow network communities," Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, Springer, vol. 24(3), pages 378-400, September.
    6. Yuan Hsiao, 2022. "Network diffusion of competing behaviors," Journal of Computational Social Science, Springer, vol. 5(1), pages 47-68, May.
    7. Candiani, Juan Antonio & Gilsing, Victor & Mastrogiorgio, Mariano, 2022. "Technological entry in new niches: Diversity, crowding and generalism," Technovation, Elsevier, vol. 116(C).
    8. Jeffrey A. Smith & Jessica Burow, 2020. "Using Ego Network Data to Inform Agent-based Models of Diffusion," Sociological Methods & Research, , vol. 49(4), pages 1018-1063, November.
    9. Renato Corbetta, 2015. "Between indifference and coercion: Third-party intervention techniques in ongoing disputes," Conflict Management and Peace Science, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 32(1), pages 3-27, February.
    10. Ad van den Oord & Arjen van Witteloostuijn, 2017. "The Population Ecology of Technology: An Empirical Study of US Biotechnology Patents from 1976 to 2003," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(1), pages 1-26, January.
    11. Jiaqi Ge & Andrea Scalco & Tony Craig, 2022. "Social Influence and Meat-Eating Behaviour," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(13), pages 1-23, June.
    12. Heinrich Leuthold & Michael Hermann & Sara Irina Fabrikant, 2007. "Making the Political Landscape Visible: Mapping and Analyzing Voting Patterns in an Ideological Space," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 34(5), pages 785-807, October.
    13. Junyi Gao & Joerg Heintz & Christina Mack & Lucas Glass & Adam Cross & Jimeng Sun, 2023. "Evidence-driven spatiotemporal COVID-19 hospitalization prediction with Ising dynamics," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-14, December.

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