LEGITIMATION, GEOGRAPHICAL SCALE, AND ORGANIZATIONAL DENSITY - REGIONAL PATTERNS OF FOUNDINGS OF AMERICAN AUTOMOBILE PRODUCERS, 1885-1981

Do organizational processes of legitimation and competition operate wi thin different boundaries corresponding to different geographical leve ls of analysis? Following Hannan et al. (1995), this analysis explores the possibility that legitimation operates on a broader geographical scale (less constrained by political and physical barriers) than does competition. We test the argument by examining founding rates of Ameri can automobile producers from 1885 to 1981, within the framework of de nsity-dependent modeling. Our findings suggest that within the United States, legitimation operated on a national scale while competition pr oceeded primarily on a regional level. Comparison with automobile prod ucer populations in Europe yields differences in application and inter pretation of the theory. (C) 1997 Academic Press.