The Fifth Facet: The Ecosystem as an Organizational Field

Given the increasing popularity of the ecosystem construct and its adoption as an alternative model of the collectivities within which organizations operate, its relationship to existing notions of collectivities in organization theory is not clear, or if indeed relevant. We first review extant ecosystem literature, deriving six attributes that enable an evaluation of existing notions of collectivities in organization theory. We then review resource dependency theory, organization population and institutional theory, arguing that institutional theory, and the organizational field in particular, have the most resonance with the ecosystem construct. Pioneering an institutional approach to ecosystems, we identify four facets of organizational fields demarcated by an analytic focus on differing recognized areas of institutional life, and argue that an ecosystem is a fifth facet of the organizational field, consisting of both network and institutional elements with value co-creation as its recognized area of i...