The life-Cycle Perspective
As noted in this , organizations are born, grow, and eventually die (though it may take a hundred years or more). New organizations arc formed daily. At the same time, every day hundreds of organizations close their doors, never to open again. We espe
cially see this birth and death phenomenon among small busi nesses. They pop up and disappear in every community. In this section, we will build on the biological metaphor of organizations proceeding through life-cycle stages. Like human beings, we will argue, all organizations are born, live, and die. Also, like human
beings, some develop faster than others and some do a far better job of aging than others, but the metaphor remains an interesting way to conceptualize the life of an organization.