It is assumed that American labor unions, semiconductor firms, early telephone
companies, newspapers, and breweries in various areas of the world and voluntary
social service organizations in Toronto all share timeless causal regularities
by dint of the fact that we can refer to them as organizations. ( 1992: 353)
But in a world where some organizational forms are subject to takeover or
buyout attempts and others, because of deregulation or global competition,
suddenly find themselves confronted with completely new types of
competitors or forms of competition, such assumptions seem naive.