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Please also look at publications by W.E. Grant. He and his colleagues apply population ecology concepts to a wide range of issues, from sustainability to applied philosophy. For my doctorate we did exactly what you describe, in particular, looking at ways that environmental trends influenced likelihood of ameliorating results vs chaotic or downward spiraling results … Continue reading Kim Norris’ comment on Jam’s original Evaltalk post about population ecology and program sustainability

eminds me of a lava lamp metaphor that I created about a year ago to understand programs more as blobs of motivational energy

One difference between environmental sustainability, such as biological populations, I think, is that human directed programs

seminal Hannan and Freeman article ("The Population Ecology of Organizations")

How about creating a table, with one column listing the population ecology factors and the other (blank) column for program sustainability elements; submitting the table on this list. You would have to define the population ecology terms for us. Then list members could offer analogies. As list members offer suggestions the entire list could see … Continue reading David Colton’s comment on Jam’s original Evaltalk post about population ecology and program sustainability

Given that all EU social programs have to demonstrate how they will be sustainable, there’s been quite a bit of work in a variety of directions on this.

PhD theses focused on examining predictions of program sustainability deriving from ecological theories as opposed to those driving adaptation theories

program that was "adapted" to its environment a decade ago might be woefully

I have seen population ecology as focused on a population of organizations, not just an individual organization. Given that, sustainability-related questions would tend to examine characteristics at the population level

ecological economics to frame an evaluation of community sustainability