Darwinian Evolutionary Ideas in Business Economics and Organization Studies

This thesis is a study of the use of Darwinian evolutionary ideas in business economics and organization studies. Mindful of the explosion of evolutionary rhetoric in the socio-economic domain over the last three decades and informed by the modern generalized Darwinian perspective, the research has been focused on the evaluation of the precise nature and extent of use of Darwinian ideas in three of the most influential evolutionary accounts in these disciplines. Notably, Nelson and Winter’s Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change (1982), Hannan and Freeman’s Organizational Ecology (1989), and Howard Aldrich’s Organizations Evolving (1999). It is a work of comparative theory. Also since 1980, theoretical and conceptual advances in evolutionary theory confirmed the generic nature of Darwinian theory and provided generalized terms for its articulation. Whilst some major criticisms of Darwinism are easily dismissed, significantly scholars have shown that Lamarckian acquired character inheritance must be accommodated within the meta-theoretical framework of Darwinism. This study shows that whilst the damaging rhetoric of ‘Social Darwinism’ continues to discourage widespread active engagement with Darwinian theory, the pervasive implicit or ‘covert’ adoption of Darwinian ideas by social scientists nevertheless clearly endorses its general nature, confirms a Darwinian social ontology and underlines the inevitability of Darwinism in the socio-cultural domain. Following a detailed exposition of general Darwinism, this study presents a forensic comparative evaluation of the evolutionary theories under study, highlighting theoretical gaps and inconsistencies, and demonstrating their resolution within the Darwinian framework. Through the systematic application and dissection of these disparate theories, one of which is labelled ‘Lamarckian’, the analysis shows the deep extent to which they all are Darwinian. And furthermore, underlining the promise of the Darwinian system for yielding further results, the study clearly illustrates the importance of the explicit adoption of modern Darwinian concepts for helping scholars to understand the complex evolutionary processes they seek to explai

Four Essays on Economic Evolution : an introduction

This essay is in two parts. The first considers the evolution of evolutionary economics from 1982 to 2012. While enormous advances are acknowledged, it is argued that the field is in danger of fragmentation and that there has been relatively little development in its over-arching theoretical framework since Nelson and Winter (1982). This sets the scene for a 2011 workshop and four of the papers presented at the event. In the second part, each paper is outlined in turn, both in terms of its specific contribution and any light it may shine on the problems raised in the first part.Peer reviewe

Economic Cosmology and the Evolutionary Challenge

The intellectual histories of economics and evolutionary biology are closely intertwined because both subjects deal with living, complex, evolving systems. Because the subject matter is similar, contemporary evolutionary thought has much to offer to economics. In recent decades theoretical biology has progressed faster than economics in understanding phenomena like hierarchical processes, cooperative behavior, and selection processes in evolutionary change. This paper discusses three very old “cosmologies” in Western thought, how these play out in economic theory, and how evolutionary biology can help evaluate their validity and policy relevance. These cosmologies are: (1) “natural man” as a rational, self-sufficient, egotistical individual, (2) competition among individuals can lead to a well-functioning society, and (3) there exists an ideal optimal state of nature. These correspond to Colander et al. (2004) “holy trinity of orthodox economics”, rationality, greed, and equilibrium. It is argued below that current breakthroughs in evolutionary biology and neuroscience can help economics go beyond these simple cosmologiesPeer reviewe