| Sumario: | The literature focuses on innovation as an adaptive mechanism. From functionalist and evolutionary adaptation perspectives, innovative organizational populations should be expected to survive longer than normal ones, because innovative organizations and populations should be more adaptive than normal ones. The mortality rates of innovative organizational populations have not been identified, however, and the proposition of lower levels of mortality has not been tested. While the mortality rates of a number of organizational populations are known from the literature, the normal mortality rate for organizational populations has not been established either. This paper sets the stage for comparison of innovative organizations and populations to normal organizational population by identifying normal organizational population mortality rates. It concludes by discussing the basics of determining the mortality rate of innovative organizational populations. The approach to identifying normal organizational population mortality is demographic and the methodology a research synthesis of organizational population mortality studies described in the academic literature. It identifies the range of normal (mean) population mortality rates for all organizational populations assessed, and for the private (PS), non-profit (NPS) and public sectors (PSE) separately. A search of the literature for organizational population mortality studies found 33 published studies including one usable database (on the Internet). To assure only appropriate studies were included in the analysis, two criteria (screenings) were first applied to them: (1) unbiased study, covering a full population, and (2) not an outlier population. Twenty-eight studies met the standards set for the first screening and of these 21 survived the second screening. The expectation was that mortality rates would be highest in the PS; surprisingly, the highest mean mortality rates were discovered in the PSE (in the American federal government) followed by the PS. Should researchers be interested in studying innovative organizational populations using an organizational demography approach, recommendations are made as to how this could be done.
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