Understanding Organizational Evolution: Toward a Research Agenda using Generalized Darwinism (original) (raw)
Related papers
Darwinism, organizational evolution and survival: key challenges for future research
Journal of Management & Governance, 2015
How do social organizations evolve? How do they adapt to environmental pressures? What resources and capabilities determine their survival within dynamic competition? Charles Darwin's seminal work The Origin of Species (1859) has provided a significant impact on the development of the management and organization theory literatures on organizational evolution. This article introduces the JMG Special Issue focused on Darwinism, organizational evolution and survival. We discuss key themes in the organizational evolution research that have emerged in recent years. These include the increasing adoption of the co-evolutionary approach, with a particular focus on the definition of appropriate units of analysis, such as routines, and related challenges associated with exploring the relationship between co-evolution, re-use of knowledge, adaptation, and exaptation processes. We then introduce the three articles that we have finally accepted in this Special Issue after an extensive, multi-round, triple blind-review process. We briefly outline how each of these articles contributes to understanding among scholars, practitioners and policy makers of the continuous evolutionary processes within and among social organizations and systems.
The Meaning of Evolutionary Language in the Study of Organizations: Lost in Translation?
2014
This paper explores the institutionalisation of key evolutionary terms in scientific discourse and how these impact the language concerned with the evolution of organizations. Evolutionary models in management and organization theory display a bewildering array of applications and interpretations so that the meaning of key terms such as “selection” and “co-evolution” is inconsistent, frequently confused and lost in translation. Through a comprehensive bibliometric and narrative analysis of an expanding literature we determine that “evolution” is a vague word. Often treating evolutionary terms as precise and meaningful, and “evolution” as a term upon which we are all agreed, we find broad and ambiguous terms often substitute in this literature for clear definition and precise explanation. In the interests of progress towards a more unifying evolutionary interpretive framework, we call for greater clarity and precision in the use of evolutionary language.
Human Relations, 1997
There has been much debate in the management literature between neo-Darwinists (who believe in the natural selection of populations of organizations) and adaptationists (who contend that changes in organization structure and behavior occur in response to the environment). The general thesis of neo-Darwinism is that species are blindly selected for survival by the environment. The latest empirical support for the dominant neo-Darwinism perspective adopted by most biologists is based primarily on the experiments conducted by Salvador Luria who claims to have conclusively demonstrated that genes mutate randomly. Recently, however, biologists have re-examined Luria's research methods and, after replications of his experiments, now question some aspects of the validity of his results. Moreover, there is now new research which provides support for the earlier adaptationist position, namely, the existence of evolutionary drivers and directors existing within self-organizing systems. Of...
Is organizational evolution Darwinian and/or Lamarckian?
International Journal of Organizational Analysis
PurposeRecently, some biologists have argued that the time has come to replace separation between Lamarckism and Darwinism with their connection. The aim of this paper is to understand whether this paradigm shift in the interpretation of biological evolution offers useful insights for dealing with the unresolved issue of how industries and their organizational populations evolve.Design/methodology/approachLamarckism and Darwinism are two approaches that have contrasted or interwoven with each other in the study of biological evolution, just as they have in the study of organizational evolution. This paper provides a critical analysis of the long history of the debate through to the recent, revolutionary discoveries in evolutionary microbiology obtained in the wake of the genomic revolution.FindingsFrom this new research frontier emerge three important findings: adaptive variations are no longer an anomaly that is peculiar to human organizations, but rather correspond to a widely obs...
On the evolutionary and behavioral theories of organizations: a tentative roadmap
Organization Science, 2007
C yert and March's A Behavioral Theory of the Firm has been acknowledged as one of the most fundamental pillars on which evolutionary theorizing in economics is built. Nelson and Winter's 1982 book is pervaded by the philosophy and concepts previously developed by Cyert, March, and Simon. Behavioral notions, such as bounded rationality are also at the heart of economic theories of institutions such as transaction costs economics. In this paper, after briefly reviewing the basic concepts of evolutionary economics, we discuss its implications for the theory of organizations (and business firms in particular), and we suggest that evolutionary theory should coherently embrace an "embeddedness" view of organizations, whereby the latter are not simply efficient solutions to informational problems arising from contract incompleteness and uncertainty, but also shape the "visions of the world," interaction networks, behavioral patterns, and the identity of the agents. After outlining the basic features of this perspective, we analyze its consequences and empirical relevance.
A new perspective on: evolutionary processes and organizational adaptation
Journal of Organization Design
Levinthal’s (Evolutionary processes and organizational adaptation: a Mendelian perspective on strategic management. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2021) book is not only a helpful resource on the many facets of organizational adaptation, but also a source of inspiration that promises to revitalize research on organizational evolution. Taking inspiration from this book, I outline a perspective on three topics that may enrich management research: (1) Levinthal’s treatment of path-dependence is a much-needed candidate for a general account of selection processes across biological and social domains; (2) Levinthal’s idea that corporate diversification and technological disruption may be considered instances of speciation—i.e., branching of lineages—(re)frames an exciting research agenda at the intersection of ecology and evolution; (3) Considering executives as a population of fruit flies may, from the perspective of empirical research, be a useful complement to the idea of the Mendel...
A Conceptual View of Organizational Evolution
Evolution is a well-established biological theory, and basic concepts can be abstracted and applied to nonbiological domains such as organizations. There is a gap in the literature regarding how evolutionary processes can be applied to domains other than biology. While this gap is closing, it is still debated and argued. This paper includes a general evolutionary algorithm and an abstract limits-to-success network model to explore examples of how evolution is applicable to nonbiological systems. This paper provides a theoretical approach to generalizing evolution rather than closing a gap in the literature.
Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 2020
This conceptual article discusses and, from some aspects, also problematizes the state-of-theart regarding co-evolutionary research in Management and Organization Studies (MOS). Analyzing 76 characteristic studies published since 2000, we address three simple, significant questions: What co-evolves? What causal relationships are considered? What are the theoretical processes? The motivation behind our contribution is twofold: on the one hand, the turn of the century witnessed the remarkable growth of inquiries which, at face value, have claimed to be "co-evolutionary"; but, on the other hand, specific analyses about where this fast-growing metatheoretical perspective on social change is now, and where it could move towards in the future, are still missing in MOS. Our study reveals increasing heterogeneity in defining what coevolves and the associated causal relationships. It also reveals the prevailing scarcity in explaining what processes substantially characterize co-evolution in MOS. With a view to shaping the future direction of research in this area, we propose four core principles that theoretically set the co-evolutionary project apart.
Evolutionary thought in management and organization theory at the beginning of the new millennium
2003
Abstract The beginning of a new millennium provides a welcome opportunity to take stock of the accomplishments, open questions, and most promising research avenues of evolutionary models in management and organization theory. Johann Peter Murmann has invited Howard Aldrich, Daniel Levinthal, and Sidney Winter to appraise the state of the art in evolutionary research and where scholarly efforts should go in the new millennium.
Evolutionary Studies in Business: A Presentation of a New Journal
Journal of Evolutionary Studies in Business-JESB, 2016
The Journal of Evolutionary Studies in Business is a new open access journal led by an international interdisciplinary team of scholars located in eight institutions from three continents who wants to attract contributions that help shed light on the new questions, challenges, methodologies and realities, faced by businesses in an evolutionary perspective. The journal calls particularly for review essays that deal with new research topics about business, and provide useful overviews of the key ideas, scholars, and debates about important research topics concerning business and its environment.