Category: Program Sustainability, Replication and Scale-up

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

It seems to me that the principles of population ecology could be very useful in understanding program sustainability.

Are principles of population ecology useful in understanding sustainability as evaluators use the term?

I have been toying with an idea about thinking of "fidelity" in terms of "attractors" as they are cast in complex adaptive systems (CAS).