Why the microbrewery movement? Organizational dynamics of resource partitioning in the US brewing industry

The number of small specialty brewers in the U.S. beer brewing industry has increased dramatically in recent decades, even as the market for beer beca me increasingly dominated by mass-production brewing companies. Using the r esource-partitioning model of organizational ecology, this article shows th at these two apparently contradictory trends are fundamentally interrelated . Hypotheses developed here refine the way scale competition among generali st organizations is modeled and improve the theoretical development of the sociological bases for the appeal of specialist organizations' products, es pecially those related to organizational identity. Evidence drawn from qual itative and quantitative research provides strong support for the theory. T he article offers a brief discussion of the theoretical and substantive iss ues involved in application of the model to other industries and to other c ultures.