Ecosystem metaphor may apply to terrorists.

• Position: Your Life

The world today is more intimate and tightly wound together than ever before. Organizations are linked together in a variety of ways, allowing relationships to form and resources to be exchanged.

Matt Mars, assistant professor of agricultural leadership and communication in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at the University of Arizona, Tucson, and Judith Bronstein, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, have teamed up to better understand the natural properties of the networks that tie together human actors and organizations--and the Department of Defense is interested in their research as a way to analyze terrorist networks.

'Today's society doesn't work in isolation," says Mars. "It's becoming easier to show who's connected to who, but knowing how one organization affects another remains a particularly difficult challenge. What actors and groups keep a network together? Who is expendable?"

The researchers are using an organizational ecology model, drawn originally from the biological sciences, to study how groups form and interact. Mars' research focuses on charter schools and other human systems, while Bronstein's focuses on cooperation and insect networks.

To gain more insight, Mars and Bronstein are looking at the opportunities and limitations of viewing such networks from the perspective of an "organizational ecosystem metaphor." Traditionally...