A Genealogical Approach to Organizational Life Chances: The Parent-Progeny Transfer among Silicon Valley Law Firms, 1946-1996

This research was supported by a grant from the Kauffman Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership, Kansas City, MO. I thank Christine Beckman, Matthew Bothner, Ron Burt, Glenn Carroll, Stanislav Dobrev, Karen Donohue, Angela Fan, JiYoon In, Rakesh Khurana, James Kitts, Robyn Moler, Don Palmer, Justin Park, Katherine Williams Phillips, Joel Podolny, Jesper Sorensen, Olav Sorenson, Toby Stuart, Valery Yakubovich, Ezra Zuckerman, the participants of the Northwestern Kellogg ICC Research Workshop, the MIT Sloan Strategy Workshop, the Purdue Krannert Strategy Seminar, and three anonymous reviewers for their invaluable assistance and feedback on earlier drafts. Any errors or misrepresentations are the author's. Data on Silicon Valley law firms over a 50-year period were used to study the genealogy of organizational populations and its consequences for organizational life chances when a member of an existing firm leaves to found a new firm. Hypotheses and subsequent analysis suggest that the transfer of resources and routines between a parent organization and its progeny decreases life chances for the parent firm and increases life chances for the progeny. The results are contingent on the founder's previous position in the parent firm and time since the parenting event. In addition, I find that progeny have lower life chances when the parent is a failing firm, when there are multiple parents, and when the founder is a former senior partner of a large law firm.0