Concepts of the Life Cycle: Their History, Meanings

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CONCEPTS OF THE LIFE CYCLE: Their History, Meanings, and Uses in the Social Sciences Angela M. 0' Rand and Margaret L. Krecker Department of Sociology, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina 27706 KEY WORDS:

life cycle, life course. aging, family life cycle, organizational life cycle

Abstract

Life cycle is among the most widely used concepts in the social sciences. It may be invoked merely to denote temporality. It may be applied metaphor ically or heuristically to initiate an analysis. Or it may comprise the core assumptions of a research program in developmental processes. Strictly de fined, life cycle refers to maturational and generational processes in natural populations. Alternative conceptions of life cycle, like life span and life course, do not share t he same intrinsic reference to generation or reproduction that transcends the single lifetime of the individual. Still these concepts are often used interchangeably. The history, meanings, and uses of these con cepts across anthropology, psychology, economics, and sociology are re viewed. Three areas of modem sociology-individual aging, family life cycle, and organizational life cycle-are examined specifically in their treat ment of life-cycle concepts. Finally, the implications of alternative usages for the study of populations as opposed to individuals and for the study of stability as opposed to change are considered. INTRODUCTION

Life cycle is among

the most widely used concepts in the social sciences. However, the meanings and uses of the concept are diverse and occasionally matters of considerable dispute (Elder 1978a, Featherman 1983, Murphy 241

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1987). Strictly defined, the concept is used to represent maturational and generational processes driven by mechanisms of reproduction in natural populations. Often, though, the concept is invoked to denote temporality in a general sense; in this usage, the terms life cycle, life span, and life course are frequently treated as identical. More often the concept is applied metaphor ically or heuristically to initiate analyses of developmental or maturational phenomena across social domains from individuals to organizations. The variety of meanings and uses is indicative of the concept's wide appeal as a framework for the study of development. It reflects the multiple roles of some concepts in theory construction. However, it also suggests the possibil ity of imprecise definitions and applications in the social sciences that may create difficulties in the study of development and change. This review considers the meanings and uses of the concept of life cycle in several disciplinary specialties. After briefly reviewing the evolutionary foundations of the concept in its strictest definition, we examine alternative usages across several social science specialties-in anthropology, economics, psychology, and sociology. Then, we present a focused analysis of the current uses of life cycle in three problem domains of sociology: individual aging, family life cycle, and the organizational life cycle. This examination yields several observations regarding the utility of the life-cycle concepts for differ ent research agendas. CONCEPTS OF THE LIFE CYCLE ACROSS THE SOCIAL SCIENCES Despite the goals of conceptual specificity and precision held by the social and natural sciences alike, scientific discourse also seeks what Adams has referred to as linguistic economy, or the use of key terms "so natural, fundamental and simple" within the context of a science that they are "used without formal definition" to denote generally very complex phenomena (Adams 1979:243). In the history of biology, concepts such as evolution, heredity, and gene pool have been used in this manner (Adams 1979, Cole man 1971, Gould 1977). In the social sciences, as many or more examples abound, including the concept of life cycle. Moreover, many of these social science concepts, like life cycle, are borrowed from other sciences and used metaphorically to simplify complex social phenomena by invoking familiar schema in scientific thought. As such, key concepts come to be shared in scientific culture both as scientific constructs and as cultural viewpoints broadly understood in Western thought. Most social science conceptions of life cycle are related to nineteenth century ideas in three areas: in biology, to the relationship between individual development and the historical progression of species (ColeIllan 1971, Mayr 1982); in social philosophy, to the origins and evolution of family forms and


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kinship systems from primitive promiscuity to patriarchal monogamy (Leibo witz 1969), and in early developmental psychology, to human ontogenetic development from conception to death (Reinert 1979, Baltes 1979). Many of these views became reconciled in the Darwinian framework of natural selection (Kohn 1980), which continues to influence the social sciences directly. The principle model of life cycle that predominated at the end of the nineteenth century referred to the unilinear series of changes (transformations) in form undergone by organisms in their development over time from early stages to equivalent stages in a succeeding generation (Coleman 1971). The irreducible properties of the life cycle, therefore, were successive forms (stages), irreversible development (maturation), and the reproduction of form (generation). These elements of life cycle defined the bases of time and variation over the life span. With Darwin's theory of natural selection, the life-cycle notion was linked to the origin and extinction of species, thus resolving some longstanding debates in biology over the arguable parallelism between individual development and the development of the species (Cole man 1971, Mayr 1982, Gould 1977). In short, the idea of the life cycle emerged at the end of the century as a complex notion incorporating earlier ideas at the organismic or individual level about inheritance and development and at the species or population level about adaptation, survival, and extinc tion. It is no longer a matter of dispute among social historians that Darwin's theory was informed by the social theories of MaIthus, Paley, and others (Kohn 1980). These theories emphasized population processes and, indeed, they are credited with converting Darwin to "population thinking" (Mayr 1982). His population thinking was anchored in the core ideas that competi tion occurs among individuals rather than species and that the variation and reproduction of forms is the central feature of life. Accordingly, the idea of life cycle, as constituted by the notions of stages, maturation, and generation, implies a popUlation process of intergenerational sequences. In social anthropology, up until the 1960s, the idea of life cycle was strictly defined. Ethnographies of kinship and domestic cycles (Fortes 1949, Goody 1971) and of age-set and generation-group societies (Foner & Kertzer 1978, Kertzer & Keith 1984, Kertzer & Schaie 1989) applied the idea in all respects, and particularly in East African cultures. In this work, the process of social reproduction was defined in terms of "physical continuity and replacement" in the transmission of social capital from one generation to another (Fortes 1971: 1-2). Family, kin, or household as the primary unit of study facilitated the focus on reproduction and cross-generation transfer. This life-cycle approach at the family level had been avoided in social anthropology before the 1940s as a result of the debates over social evolution that predated Darwinian theory by over a century (Leibowitz 1969). Before

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1859, the widely held hierarchical notion of social evolution viewed mankind as having progressed from simple to complex technological social systems, with the latter usually classified as successive family or kinship systems based primarily on patterns of sexuality, reproduction, and childrearing. Primitive promiscuity, communal marriage, polygamy, gynecocracy, monogamy


these family forms and others and their evolutionary status characterized the predominant approach to social evolution. But Darwinism stimulated cultural doctrines of racial and sexual superiority that discouraged, if not preempted, further evolutionary analyses of the "family" by anthropology until alternative

approaches to social evolution based on ideas other than sexual reproduction (e.g. transactional exchange) emerged nearly a century later (Leibowitz 1969, Fortes 1949, Kertzer & Keith 1984). Social reproduction resurrected the life-cycle notion as a metaphor for intergenerational maintenance, replenish ment and exchange.

The more psychologically oriented anthropology which focused on the socialization and psychological development of the individual did not apply

the same notion of life cycle. Rather than the domestic cycle, the individual life history or biography-the life span or life course-provided the frame of reference. American anthropologists, like Kroeber and Kluckhohn in their studies of American Indians, sought out data on the "passages" of individuals' lives (Langness & Frank 1981). As such, they examined stages and matura tion. But the focus on individual life spans or life courses ignored sexual and social reproduction and intergenerational cycle. Alternative Conceptions: Life Span and Life Course The alternative life-cycle conceptions do not contain all three elements of a strict definition-stages, maturation, and generation. Life span refers to the maximum life potential of the average individual. The idea of maturation as duration between beginning (birth) and ending (death) is central to the life span alternative which lacks intrinsic reference to either stages or generation. Life course, on the other hand, implies the timing and sequencing of stages or phases in the process of maturation, but without intrinsic reference to genera tion. Life course is also an individual level construct, although it is linked with social processes in the family, the economy, and the polity (Elder 1978a, b, 1987, Hareven & Plakans 1987, Vinovskis 1977, 1988). The life-course perspective is further discussed in the section on individual aging which follows.

Life-Cycle Concepts Across the Social Sciences The scientific heritage of nineteenth-century evolutionary theories and life

cycle concepts is apparent in the other social sciences. Notions of life cycle in both individual and population terms abound, but the uses of these ideas are


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frequently inconsistent. A major dimension along which usages are arrayed is the relative emphasis on development as a population-driven process on the one hand or as an ontogenetic, or otherwise deterministic, sequence of forms on the other. These usages are based on different assumptions and/or heuristic treatments of time and variation in the course of development. As such they are conceptualized variously in terms of stages or transitions, maturation, andlor generation.


Life-cycle conceptions of stage, maturation, and/or generation treated as core assumptions in a research program operate differently than do life-cycle frameworks used as heuristic devices, metaphors, or "naive models" (Lakatos

1978). As a metaphor or "naive model," the life cycle serves as an initial framework for observation.However, when the life-cycle concept comprises fundamental assumptions regarding time and variation, it is not viewed as problematic, but as a priori. For example, Erikson's classical eight-stage model of psychosocial crises in the life cycle draws explicitly from evolution

ary theory (1963) and assumes the "ontogenesis ... of an inescapable and intrinsic order of strivings" (Erikson 1 968:292) from infancy to old age. His stage-model is conventionally viewed as a strict application of the life-cycle concept. It does not test the life-cycle model, but rather assumes its existence. Yet, Erikson's classic construction does not account for reproduction or generation at the population level. His idea of generativity does not substitute for cyclical reproduction. Levinson's ( 1978) "seasons of a man's life" similarly draws upon the assumption of time as an age-related sequence of stages presenting the individual with developmental tasks. Again, however, the social (population) task of generation is omitted. In these psychosocial stage theories, also called normative-crisis models (Clausen 1986), time is defined by developmental stages and variation refers to individuals' relatively (un)successful passages through the earlier predetermined stages. In economics, similar life-cycle assumptions are sometimes made explicit. In his discourse on "how we live," Fuchs treats the life cycle as the "constant of human existence" in which a "succession of difficult decisions" punctuates the course of modem life (Fuchs 1983:6, 76). His untested assumptions are "protected" (i.e. not directly tested) by analyses that examine life stage specific propositions about the investment in human capital ("a time to sow-adults 25-44") andlor consumption from human capital ("a time to reap-adults 45-64") over the putative economic life cycle. In the modem social sciences, however, a priori assumptions about time and variation often are more implicit than explicit in the program. In some research programs, life cycle is mentioned "in passing" to connote a general

sense of temporality or direction not clearly specified in the assumptions and not directly tested. Concepts in neoclassical theory in modem economics like "consumption function" and "permanent income" (Friedman 1957), "life-


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cycle earnings" (Weiss 1986), and "human capital" (Becker 1964, Schultz 1963) are examples of this pattern of use. An illuminating analysis of the tacit treatment of life cycle in the human capital research program is provided by Blaug (1980). This research program was announced in 1962 in a supplement volume of the Journal of Political Economy titled "Investment in Human Beings" and was more fully introduced within two years by Theodore Schultz ( 1963) and Gary Becker (1964). Blaug argues that the hard core of the human capital program takes the distribution or variation of individuals' "tastes" and "abilities" as given and assumes further that individuals' behaviors (choices) in the present are directly corre lated with their futures (particularly their future labor market values, usually measured as alternative returns for present education, work, health, etc). Here, the implicit life cycle is best conceptualized as life span, that is, as a smooth but inevitable trajectory of value necessarily linking present (age related) behavior to future (age-related) returns from the individual's perspec tive. Other programs in economics are revising the life-cycle basis of micro economic theory without abandoning the idea. In these programs, the life cycle process is defined in stronger ways, that is, metaphorically as "naive models," to test explicit hypotheses regarding time and variation that yield testable models of the life cycle itself. Winston's (1982, 1988) time-specific analysis of the economic activities of firms, households, and markets is an example. He argues that time is treated too casually by economic analysis; time is a "simple unidirectional linear flow, exogenous to the economic actors" (Winston 1982: 13). Time orders events sequentially in an analytical sense, and because of its irreversibility, it shapes economic actors' per spectives of events as past, present, and future. Here a life-course conception of life cycle is being applied, with the timing of events within the individual's time perspective defining time and the forms of variation. Winston's basic assumption is that people live and act in perspective time, time experienced as events ordered as past, present, or future. Perspective time, and particularly the present, "is the inescapable context of all actual social behavior" where actors "must make decisions Now; and they do so without the capacity to control the pace of events or to recreate the past, without knowing the events that lie in the future" ( 1988:33-34). Thus, uncertainty, bounded rationality, surprise, search, and discovery become subjects of testable hypotheses using naive models of reality like assortative mating and spot markets (e.g. in sociology, see England & Farkas 1986) that are akin to the traditional evolutionary life-cycle model coming from biology. However, they are testable in perspective time, as individuals experience normative events in time such as schooling, marriage, and retirement about which actors have relatively more information. The timing of these events is thus treated explicitly.



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Winston' s revisionism is more extensive than this review has space to consider thoroughly. But the purpose in introducing his project is to illustrate that the programmatic role of a concept such as life cycle is subject to change within developing research programs and that the process of theory develop ment contributes to the diversity in usages within, as well as across, the social sciences. Winston's model does not have the same deterministic assumptions regarding the form, timing, and directionality of the life cycle found in some other neoclassical formulations (see Fuchs 1 983), nor does it invoke implicit l ife-span trajectories like those projected in life-cycle earnings models. His approach tests explicit models of time and variation. He uses life cycle as an individual level concept. His "perspective time" actually fits the life-course conception better than the life-cycle conception. Other developing social science research programs display the same diver sity in explicit or implicit assumptions and naive models related to time and variation over the life spans of social actors at several levels of analysis-the individual, the family, and the organization. Life-span developmental psy chology in the research programs of Baltes, Schaie, B rim and their colleagues (e.g. Baltes & B rim 1 979; see Featherman 1 983 for a review), emergent human development theories in sociology (Featherman & Lerner 1 985, Featherman 1 986), status attainment models (e.g. Featherman & Hauser 1 978), life-course models of age stratification (e.g. Riley 1 987, Riley et al 1 982) and the timing of life events (e.g. Hogan 1978, Marini 1984), family development theories (e . g. Hareven 1978a, b, Grebenik et al 1 989), popula tion ecology models of organizations (e.g. Stinchcombe 1 965, Aldrich 1 979, Carroll 1 984), and demographic models of life cycles and popUlation charac teristics (e. g. Coale 1 972, Preston 1 982)-these research programs invoke different conceptualizations of the life cycle with varying attachments to strong evolutionary assumptions of sequential stages or popUlation processes and wide-ranging applications of metaphors and models. The following section reviews the usages and developments of the concept in some of these areas as they pertain to three problem domains of concern in sociology-individual aging, family life cycle, and organizational growth and decline processes.

LIFE CYCLE IN THREE PROBLEM AREAS OF SOCIOLOGY Issues of time and variation are at the core of all sociological analysis. Across specific research programs these two problematics take on specific conceptual forms, including the life cycle per se (Murphy 1 987), generation (Eisenstadt 1 956), cohort (Ryder 1 965, Hareven 1 978b), age strata (Riley 1 987), growth and decline processes of organizations (Freeman 1 982, Whetten 1 987), among many others. Strict definitions of life cycle have constituted the core


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assumptions of several research programs in sociology---e .g. the Chicago School (Park & Burgess 1921), Hawley's human ecology program (1950), and the natural history of organizations (Haire 1959, Greiner 1972). Alterna tively, other life-cycle conceptions have inspired model-testing in other re search programs---e.g. developmental contextualism in life-span theory (Featherman & Lerner 1985), Boulding's reconstruction of economics (1950), and the population ecology of organizations (Hannan & Freeman 1977, Whetten 1987)---even though the term life cycle per se may be applied to the phenomenon under study. Because of space limitations only three problem areas of sociology are selected to illustrate the history, meanings, and uses of life cycle in sociology. These three research areas are of special interest since they have undergone shifts in their life-cyle conceptualizations that have influenced the treatment of time and variation. Notable shifts in their respective life-cycle conceptions illustrate developments of these research programs that include (a) the explicit rejection of assumptions regarding inevitable and predetermined sequences of forms (i.e. life stages, family structures) in the study of individual aging and family development; (b) the explicit assumption that development is a process that in fact extends beyond the life spans of individuals (i.e. across genera tions) in the study of families; and (c) the adoption of strong assumptions regarding the historical interplay between individual (organizational) develop ment and social (population) change actually akin to the original formulation of the life-cycle concept across studies of individual, family, and organiza tional change. Individual Aging The field of aging is an intellectual descendent of the longstanding traditions concerned with problems of growth, maturation, senescence, and death of individuals (Tanner 1981, Reinert 1979). Indeed, the terms aging and life cycle have often been treated as synonymous in this field (Kertzer & Keith 1984). It is instructive to note that in the recently published Encyclopedia of Aging which attempts a comprehensive, though telegraphic, overview of the "state of the art," space is not assigned to review the life-cycle concept per se. Instead, it is cross-referenced with the three-page review of life course (Kastenbaum 1987:388-391). Although the life-course section begins by acknowledging that life cycle, life span, and life course are nearly equivalent terms (note: life-span is allocated two pages of its own in the same volume; see Fries 1987:401--402), the content of the review clearly affirms the ascen dance of life course as the "new wave" program for studying aging as a dynamic and heterogeneous phenomenon. This position represents a consensus in the research community (Feather man 1986, Riley 1987, Campbell & O'Rand 1988). Research on aging has undergone a series of problem shifts in the recent 20-year period, moving



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toward comparative research with a growing emphasis on heterogeneity in the timing and on variation of the population-level and individual-level determi nants of the aging process in individuals (Elder 1975). Developing theories of the organization of the life course attempt to reconcile ideas regarding the structural embeddedness of the aging process of individuals with those addressing the historic interplay of aggregate patterns of individual behavior and social change (O'Rand 1990). Specific hypotheses derived from these programs are serious attempts at theory-building. Indeed, in the emergent social theories of aging the overall shift is away from stage- or age-specific theories or idiographic accounts and toward evolutionary and structural theor ies of human development linking life cycle and population in the contexts of historical change (Birren & Bengtson 1988, Riley 1987). An interest in cohorts as categories linking population processes with individual life cycles has existed for over two decades (Ryder 1965, Waring 1975, Riley et al 1982, Hareven 1978a, b, Easterlin 1980, Uhlenberg 1988). The idea here is that the relative structural compositions (e.g. size, sex ratio) and the historical experiences of successive birth cohorts moving through time have causal implications for the life courses of individuals. Easterlin's hy pothesis of birth and fortune (1980) asks whether the fertility rates of succeed ing cohorts are functions of their own numbers and the opportunity structures accessible to them for personal development (e.g. occupational mobility, childbearing/rearing, etc). Thus, the baby-boom generation's cohort-specific life cycle, including a lower fertility rate for example, is accounted for by a population process rather than by ontogenetically determined life-cycle stages. Of course, the implicit assumption of most cohort frameworks is one of homogeneity within cohorts, thus constraining the analysis of variation in individual development (Dannefer 1988). A second example is Featherman's ( 1986) project to study individual development as a population process. Featherman argues that "individuals may manifest development, but that a causal understanding of why in dividuals develop or tend to manifest only certain ranges and patterns of age-related change must be based on a population level of analysis" ( 1986: 101). Development is distinguished from other types of change as "duration dependent," i.e. as a function of time-in-state (Featherman & Lerner 1985). Hypotheses generated by Featherman's thesis pertain to variations in time dependent change or human development across time and across individuals. The program methodology is comprised of observational and analytical strat egies that permit the study of "time paths" of behaviors or attributes and the "statistical commonalities" in time-related change of these paths. Time related changes can be indexed as duration dependence (the rate of change from a state or the "waiting time" to leave a state), age-graded transitions (the age-related movement into and out of states), and event transitions (event-


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related changes in states). Both normative and nonnormative life-course events are examined as states variously linked through time in individuals' lives. The effect of time in these states (duration dependence) is presumed to be basic to human development. Recent developments in dynamic methods provide the formal-analytic tools for modeling these temporal processes (see Tuma & Hannan 1984, Campbell & O'Rand 1988). Time-, age-, and event graded individual development is also conceived as historically embedded, yielding the telegraphic characterization of this approach as "developmental contextualism" (Featherman & Lerner 1985). An example of research consistent with the assumptions of Featherman's program is Duncan's (1988) panel study of age-related and event-related risks for poverty, using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics between 1969 and 1979. Duncan challenges the validity of the conventional life-cycle earnings model, i.e. the smooth profile of rising family income in early adulthood periods and falling income at later stages derived from con ventional neoclassical assumptions underlying human capital theories. He finds family income to be highly volatile across the life-spans of individuals, with episodes of pervasive income loss tied in complex ways to demographic status (age and gender) and life events (divorce, widowhood, unemploy ment). Thus, the emphasis on development as a continuous, population-driven and historically situated process leads to questions regarding the variability and determinants of the timing and ordering of life events. Historical studies (e.g. Hareven 1978a, Uhlenberg 1988), demographic models (e.g. Preston 1982, Oppenheimer 1988), and longitudinal analyses of transitions in modem life (Hogan 1978, Marini 1984, Henretta & O'Rand 1989) have clearly es tablished that selected life cycle stages can be reversible, repeatable, and only loosely coupled with biological and chronological age over the individual life-span and across historical time. Demographers have clearly established that individual variations in the age-schedule of life events are functions of demographic (Preston 1982) and historical change (Easterlin 1980, Elder 1981). For example, the prevalence and the temporal characteristics of remarriage over time are tied to historical cohorts and to shifting demographic pressures (Uhlenberg 1989), not to immutable family life cycles. Similarly, the timing and ordering of early life events related to major life domains such as education, marriage, and work lead to heterogeneous outcomes later in the life course and thus produce heterogeneity even within cohorts. The transition to adulthood, for example, is age-, event- and duration-dependent, and in tum constrains the shape and time-trajectory of the remaining life courses of individuals, i.e. their midlives (Hogan 1978, Marini 1984) and their late life statuses (Henretta & O'Rand 1989). Thus, "pathways" rather than "stages" are the empirically valid metaphors of the life course (Hogan & Astone 1986), although most research



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restricts itself to particular transitions representing circumscribed portions of the total life course (e.g. transition to adulthood, retirement, widowhood). Heterogeneity in life-course transitions is also shaped by the synchroniza tion and conjunction of multiple life events which are always constrained by varying conditions of uncertainty or opportunity. Oppenheimer's theory of marriage timing (1988), for example, ties marriage timing to the transition-to work. Since work roles are crucial to socioeconomic prospects which, in tum, operate to constrain the assortative mating process, marriage timing is con strained by the transition to work. The conditions of the latter are highly uncertain, both in terms of more instantaneous issues of work role encumben cy and commitment and regarding long-term careers. The complexity of the marriage process increases even more when men and women both face problems in the synchronization of both transitions. Research programs on aging adopt a variety of approaches to the life-cycle problem and have undergone shifts in emphasis toward process and heterogeneity and away from stages and assumptions regarding their internal homogeneity. Although the causal framework of research on aging differs in significant ways from the general evolutionary model of the life cycle in herited from the past, it nevertheless shares a persistent concern in linking individuals to populations.

Famity Life Cycle Scholars of the family trace family life-cycle models within cultures to the tum of the century (see Rountree 1902, especially), but view the postwar period as a significant period of conceptual change, indeed, one of conceptual revolution. There is no shortage of reviews of the demise of the traditional family life-cycle concept (e.g. Elder 1978b, Hiss & Mattesich 1979, Juster & Vinovskis 1987, Murphy 1987, Grebenik et al 1989). That concept in its strongest form denoted a sequence of a priori stages in the family's progres sion from marriage to widowhood. The stage model, which found perhaps its most fervent advocacy in the work of Edith Duvall (see Murphy 1987), not only based time and variation on the cyclical age-related processes of forma tion, extension, contraction, and dissolution, it also had only one kind of family in mind-the nuclear family in mid twentieth century western (Amer ican) culture, consisting of a married couple with children. The family life-cycle model assumed a particular family type and indexed its develop ment as changes in the size and composition of the unit over time, with the strong assumptions that all members of a cohort married and that no marriage ended without children, in divorce, or in premature death. It omitted con siderations of generation or reproduction, in spite of its emphasis on stages of parenthood. There is also little dispute that the life-course approach with its emphases


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on heterogeneity of timing, sequencing, and synchronization had the major impact on this conceptual shift (Juster & Vinovskis 1987). The approach to timing of the classical model was established in Glick's demographic study titled "Family Life Cycle" (1947), which identified seven major events in the cycle and calculated age norms of their occurrence. Thus, stage-specific central tendencies became normative benchmarks in the model. Life-course approaches, alternatively, have developed more dynamic heuristics to capture the patterns and causes of temporal pathways through life domains such as the family (Featherman 1986, Hogan & Astone 1986). The emphasis on the nuclear family not only limited analysis to a family type, it also tended to focus exclusively on its earlier phases, i.e. formation (marriage) and extension (childbearing/rearing) patterns (Grebenik et al 1989). Thus, the timing and sequencing of later family events were largely preempted by the narrow focus. This bias in the family life-cycle literature was revealed most effectively by the new family history which emerged in the 1960s in the works of Goode, Tilly, Aries, Demos, and several others (Elder 1978a, Hareven 1978a). Examinations of family life from the colonial period forward, for example, did not fit with the life-cycle model; variable patterns of marriage timing, childbearing, and remarriage in different historical con texts presented anomalies for the conventional model. In addition, the availability of materials on the entire life courses of individuals provided insights into the increasing heterogeneity among individuals over the life course which demonstrated the life-cycle model's limited capacity to account for variation (Hareven 1978b). Simultaneously, life-course research had already begun to address the issue of changing gender roles that, by definition, challenged the traditional model (Rossi 1980). Women's increasing participation in the workplace and men's variable work-career patterns coupled with trends toward delayed marriage and lower lifetime fertility were leading to a reconstruction of views regarding men's and women's life courses (e.g. Farber 1961, Wilensky 1960, 1961, Oppenheimer 1974). Farber's formal theory of the family as a set of mutually contingent careers was an early recognition of the inflexibility of the tradition al model and the need for an analytical framework to test hypotheses regard ing the interplay between individual life courses and the family's life course (Farber 1961). The two decades following Farber's work would give rise to the life-course model described in the earlier section on aging, with its emphases on cohorts, transitions, and issues of temporality regarding timing, order, sequence, and synchronization. The family research tradition has turned to the explicit treatment of time. Questions pertaining to the interdependence of family time and individual life time within the context of historical time are being raised by what is now referred to as "family development theory" (Hill & Mattessich 1979). This



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research program has emerged out of the life-cycle tradition in direct response to life-course analysis. Its concerns parallel the life-course problem of the relationship of individual development to population or social change. The strategy in this program is to account for the variance in family organization over time that is attributable to developmental processes in the family itself and to contextual changes in its environment, respectively. The cohort strategy is the heuristic for this analysis. Comparisons are made between aggregates of families which come into existence during selected time intervals. Inter- and intra-cohort variations become the indexes of de velopmental versus contextual change, and their interdependence can be determined (Hill & Mattessich 1979). The family development perspective has moved from a non-intergenera tional model of the family life cycle to a focus on family processes, a shift in its research agenda which parallels that in the field of aging. New assumptions regarding time and variation have raised new questions. Many of these questions are plausibly raised by the life-course emphasis on individual development and its contingent features. What factors predict the timing of marriage and childbearing? In tum, how do the timing of marriage and childbearing bear upon subsequent transitions in family and work? How does the expanding longevity of the life course influence the duration and sequenc ing of family events? These questions pertain to family processes but in the context of individual life courses. On the other hand, questions pertaining to variations in intergenerational patterns of exchange within lineage families may present a set of puzzles that the individual life-course perspective cannot usurp or account for (Bengtson et al 1985, Bengtson & Robertson 1985). The "multigenerational family" as a unit of analysis defines time differently from the nuclear family life cycle and from the individual life course (Knipscheer 1 988). Long-term trends in the extension of longevity have "verticalized" the family, introducing more gen erations per family (Bengtson et al 1985) even as the fertility rate has declined. Vertical relations across generations are superseding relations with in generations in their relevance for distinguishing family from other social relations over the individual life-span and beyond it (Uhlenberg 1980). In short, family research has undergone very dramatic changes in theory and method in the recent period. Life-course research has, in some ways, appropriated and redefined many empirical problems relegated historically to the family area. The family life-cycle program has moved toward different questions pertaining to family development processes and, lately, to specific considerations of multigenerational family processes. The traditional life cycle assumptions regarding stage and maturation have been rejected; new programs of research with different assumptions are emerging to replace the older view and to complement related programs like life-course analysis.

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Organizational Life Cycle The research program in modem organizational ecology was initiated in the early work of Freeman & Hannan (1975, Hannan & Freeman 1977) and in Howard Aldrich's exposition of social evolutionary models (Aldrich 1979, Campbell 1969). Its intellectual and historical roots, however, lie in Amos Hawley's human ecology model (1950), plant ecology (Adams 1935), and the Chicago School. Indeed, early research by Park and particularly by Park's students both anticipates more recent ecological-evolutionary approaches in organizational sociology and reflects a similar differentiation of so-called "rational selection" and "natural history" or "natural selection" models (Bums 1980). Population ecologists adapted bioecological models to study processes of organizational change. These processes are redefined at the level of organiza tional populations rather than the adaptive or maturational processes of in dividual organizations. Individual organizations are important primarily as a source of variation from which external (environmental) mechanisms select those organizations that are best suited to, or "fit," the resource space. Consequently, a population of organizations demonstrates increasing "fit" or "isomorphism" with respect to its environment over time (Hannan & Freeman 1977, Aldrich 1979). Understanding the patterns of births and deaths (net mortality) which give rise to various organizational (population) fornls is a major goal of this research program. In spite of the term "organizational ecology" or "population ecology," research programs are active at all levels of analysis�the individual organiza tion, the population of organizations, and thc organizational community comprised of interdependent populations (Carroll 1984). These programs share a common substantive dimension-the adoption of life cycle as an analogy or theory-building device to characterize the passage of time and the structural changes in organizations or populations of organizations as pro cesses of growth and decline (Kimberly 1980a, Freeman 1982). Views about the source of variation are similarly tied to the level of analysis adopted and the particular way in which life cycle is used. Exactly how the concept is used varies substantially within this specialty area. It is not used systematically in the ideal typical form of parallel processes of reproduction and maturation at the population- and individual levels, but clear deviations such as those that are represented by the concepts of life span or life course are equally rare. Instead, fields of study within organizational ecology extract different components from a life-cycle model to account for the phenomenon of organizational change. Studies of individual organizations adopt an implicit and untested use of life cycle as a core assumption and show a remarkable similarity to the literature on human development. As such, their primary concern lies with the



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structural development or maturation of organizations although they presume that these are embedded in the reproduction of organizational forms at the population level. An early model proposed by Greiner (1972), for example, is reminiscent of Erikson's stage model of human (psychosocial) development. This model asserts that organizational growth occurs in five distinguishable phases characterized by periods of relative calm ("evolutionary periods") followed by substantial turmoil ("revolutionary periods"). Each of the latter periods is characterized by a particular problem or crisis (e.g. a crisis of leadership, a crisis of control, etc) that management must resolve before organizational development can proceed to the next stage. Other models of organizational life cycles differ on the specific mechanisms determining development but share a linear, unidirectional view of progressive movement and often make strong developmental (ontogenetic) assumptions (Cafferata 1982, see Quinn & Cameron 1983 for a review). The timing of such crises becomes an important research issue in more recent models that incorporate environmental disequilibrium, technological discontinuities, and "reversible" movement or even stagnation (e.g. Tushman & Romanelli 1985). But, the idea that organizational development is an individual-level process of matur ational unfolding remains a central feature of these theoretical discussions. Empirical studies at the organizational level usually adopt, at least im plicitly, some such model, but tend to assume rather than test the occurrence of sequential structural changes. As such, explanations frequently rest on the assumption that change over the history of an organization is a manifestation of a similar population-level process (e.g. Langton 1984); or, similarly, that the extraction of one particular period of development (e.g. founding and early growth) is embedded in a longer-term process of maturation (e.g. Kimberly 1980b). Finally, studies of organizational decline and death which have received much less attention than early development and births continue to struggle with the deterministic assumptions that underlie stage models of development and try to distinguish processes of organizational decline from so-called "later life" or "aging" of organizations (Whetten 1987, Weitzel & Jonsson 1989). Here, organizational studies are trying to develop alternative explanations that retain the concept of life cycle as a way to characterize the temporal process of growth and decline while rejecting the prominence of age-related stages of development (and decline) implied by strict adherence to a life-cycle model. Life cycle is invoked as a metaphor to test life-cycle processes in pop ulation-level studies of organizational mortality and/or foundings. Drawing on recent developments in dynamic analysis (Tuma & Hannan 1984), re searchers develop formal statistical models of underlying stochastic processes generating differential rates of mortality (e.g. Freeman et al 1983). Here, the links between processes of growth and decline at the individual (organization)


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and population levels are elaborated in model parameters that identify and extract separate components of the mortality process. The often hypothesized "liability of newness" (Stinchcombe 1965) experienced by new organizations is decomposed into three components-the rate of "infant mortality," the asymptotic rate of mortality that applies to organizations surviving initial age-dependent mortality, and the speed at which the rate approaches the asymptotic level (e.g. Freeman et al 1983) . The "liability of newness" has been demonstrated consistently across various populations, and its explana tion typically involves some appeal to an organizational life cycle with the assumption of corresponding population and (individual) organizational pro cesses that accompany this idea. Both the population-dynamics model of Carroll & Delacroix (1982) and the density-dependence model of Hannan & Freeman (1987) appeal to processes across levels of analysis to account for organizational foundings and deaths. For example, in Delacroix & Carroll's study (1983) of foundings of news paper organizations in Ireland and Argentina, prior foundings and prior deaths have curvilinear effects on current and future foundings because of material processes (e.g. newly available resources due to a death, creation of a market due to new foundings) and/or subjective evaluations by potential entrepre neurs. Conversely, a very high level of previous deaths or foundings is indicative of a "noxious" or saturated environment. Their study of organiza tional mortality rates in these same populations (Carroll & Delacroix 1982) also appeals to population-organization links. An analysis of cohort depen dence tests the hypothesis that the life chances of individual newspapers will be greater in later cohorts due to the greater maturity of the industry as a. whole. The crux of the explanation for the cohort-dependent mortality rates in Argentina but not Ireland lies in (a) a time-span of data for Ireland that is incomplete and lacks information on the industry's earliest history or "in fancy;" and (b) Ireland's closer ties with England which had an established ("mature") newspaper industry. In short, the critical component of the ex planation lies in the appeal to an older and hence more mature population (industry) and its influence on the deaths of individual organizations. Explanations of these phenomena place demands on only the broadest outlines of the idea of life cycle. In 1952, Penrose (1 952:805) pointed out that the tendency to invoke a life-cycle analogy in the theory of the firm injected far more assumptions and implications into an explanation than were neces sary to account for the fact that "all firms had some sort of a beginning, a period of existence and, if now extinct, an end." Similarly, researchers in organizational ecology avail themselves of "life cycle" as a ready term and explanation, but they focus on the occurrence of events (births and deaths), specifically (and almost exclusively) their occurrence during the early years of an organizational population. They have expressed relatively little interest in the timing andlor sequencing of structural transformations over the life course



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of an organizational population, the maturational phases that characterize organizations and differentiate populations of organizations, or the variety of hypotheses logically generated and interrelated by a full-fledged and system atic adoption of a life-cycle model. Notably, this loose adaptation of the concept provides a ready source of variation that can be easily accounted for with reference to a life-cycle trajectory. Not unlike early research on aging, the existence of variation in studies of individual organizations is associated with movement through a series of structural transformations or successive forms in response to en vironmental exigencies, managerial prowess, or both (e.g. Kimberly 1980b, Langton 1984). Variation plays a more apparent role for population studies; indeed, Hannan & Freeman (1977) spawned this research program by raising questions about the diversity of organizational structures in society. Yet, despite the key role of variation in population ecology models, its source seems to be of little concern. The popUlation ecology model is "indifferent to the ultimate source of variation, as planned and unplanned variation both provide raw material from which selection can be made" (Aldrich 1979:28). However, since organizations are constrained by strong inertial pressures, the immediate source of variation is always known; organi zational births or foundings introduce "raw material" into an existing popula tion of organizations and are then subject to the same environmental selection as their predecessors. In the case of new organizations introduced into, and replicating the form of, an existing population, these selection processes and the reSUlting organizational form are accounted for by appealing to the maturational "clocks" at the populational level which may either enhance or inhibit the life chances of the individual organization. Alternatively, new organizations which also initiate new forms have the liabilities of newness and "infancy" in the maturational processes, corresponding to the larger social system (Hannan & Freeman 1987). Notably, however, most research focuses on the former type-new exampl�s of existing forms (Hawley 1981, Astley 1985). As such, variation and its potential influence on organizational struc tures in society is always constrained by time as it is parameterized in a life cycle model (but see Brittain & Freeman 1980; Delacroix et al 1989). Life cycle operates in a variety of ways in organizational sociology, but, particularly within the most active program of population ecology, in ways that may be at odds with the program's stated goals. Life cycle and the maturational or growth processes it invokes become an economical way (recall Adams 1979) to characterize the passage of time, but it simultaneously raises the salience of orderly processes and logical similarities among in dividuals (population units) while masking the potential heterogeneity or volatility accompanying this process. The constraints of this metaphorical use of life cycle can be seen in light of recommendations by friendly critics to reconsider and expand the role of variation (e.g. Hawley 198 1, Astley 1985)

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and of recent challenges by competing research programs such as institutional theories (Zucker 1 987). Despite recent dialogues between these two schools of thought (e.g. Carroll & Hannan 1 989 and the accompanying comment by Zucker), efforts at synthesis reveal the power, and hence the attractiveness, of a heuristic use of life cycle which can readily extract and incorporate com ponents of the competing program and recast it at a single (population) level of analysis without challenging the fundamental assumptions implied by a stricter definition of the concept. CONCLUSIONS The meanings and uses of life cycle across the social sciences are varied and widespread. But the problems and prospects attached to their uses are remark ably similar. The level of analysis, conceptualization of time, and sources of variation pose common constraints on the use of life-cycle concepts across the social sciences. Life cycle, most precisely defined, requires explicit treatment of stages (phases), maturation (development) , and generation (reproduction). This basic conceptualization provides an "ideal type" of developmental pro cess from which its alternatives diverge. The life-span alternative tends to represent the duration of the individual's lifetime over which maturation is presumed to occur . Except for events of birth or death, the life span represents an undifferentiated conception of the lifetime. Life course, on the other hand, is distinguished by its focus on the content, timing, and sequencing of phases or events constituting the de velopmental pathways of individuals. These alternative conceptions do not account for reproduction or generation. These distinctions are not universally recognized across the social sciences. The concepts are used interchangeably and often invoked only for purposes of linguistic economy, i.e. to denote a sense of temporality in the life of an individual or a collectivity. Yet, the implications of these different con ceptualizations are considerable. A careful study of the traditional life-cycle concept reveals its specific relevance to populations rather than individuals, since it involves reproduction and generation. Alternatively, life span and life course are more relevant to the examination of individual lives, although both conceptions have come to be tied to or embedded within population-level frameworks . The life-course conception, particularly, has become associated with age stratification theory which explicitly links individual aging with population change. Thus, the life-course concept has implications for the examination of social change. However, the strict life-cycle conception is more relevant for the examina tion of social order and equilibrium processes than for the study of change. The requisite notion of reproduction which defines the "cyclical" component of the traditional concept places limits on the analysis of heterogeneity and



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change. The demise of the naive use of the traditional family life cycle concept has been traced to this specific limitation. This dichotomy in the conception of time has been noted by Gould ( 1987) to express the persistent tension in Western thought between "time' s cycle" and "time' s arrow. " The former accounts for the immanence of cyclical constraints in the process of social order, the latter for linear progression through time in the process of change. These underlying concepts of time, when ignored or confused, can limit the precision of our understanding of development and misspecify the phenomenon under study. Finally, despite the prescriptive tone with which this study is concluding, it is illuminating to discover the universal appeal of shared concepts in the sciences . The call for an "orthodox" metatheoretical usage of the concept across the social sciences does not dispose of the observation that heuristic uses of the life-cycle idea, even those violating the assumptions of the traditional conception, have been productive in some specialties. It has worked well as a "naive model" for the developing program in the popUlation ecology of organizations . It has been testable in this usage. It is nevertheless the case that some research programs themselves are inconsistent in their declarations of usage and it is here that greater precision is required. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors appreciate the assistance of Glen H . Elder, Jr. , Ida Harper Simpson, E . Roy Weintraub, Mac O'Barr, and two anonymous reviewers in the preparation of this review.

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