After Minimalism: Transformations of State Bar Associations from Market Dependence to State Reliance, 1918 to 1950

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Abstract
Compared to conventional approaches, we conceptualize transformations in populations of organizations in terms of shifts in their relative embeddedness in markets and states. As organizations expand beyond minimalist conditions of existence, states and markets offer alternative solutions to the core problems of persistence: obtaining resources, managing competition, and constructing legitimacy. By analyzing the movers and stayers in a population of state bar associations that split into two co-existing forms of organization - one primarily reliant on the market and the other primarily dependent on the state - we demonstrate that a two-stage transition to a new form can be explained by the complementary interplay of resource dependency and neo-institutional theories. Organizations are more likely to move from reliance on the market to reliance on the state if (1) their market performance has been unsuccessful, (2) states are willing and able to solve organizational problems, (3) organizations are younger and less established, and (4) compelling alternative models have been propagated by moral entrepreneurs and adopted by influential states.