MARKET NICHE

Our purpose in this note is to make explicit how two lines of work in sociology - the population ecology of organizations and the structural hole theory behind network studies of markets - are based on the same unit of analysis. The unit is a set of structurally equivalent producers; termed a niche in population ecology and a market in structural hole theory. Making the market niche analogy explicit puts a bridge in place for what we believe, and begin to explain here, should be productive exchange between the two lines of work.