Why the economic conception of human behabiour might lack a biological basis

In several recent papers Arthur Robson sketches evolutionary scenarios in order to explain why we humans evolved hard-wired utility functions and the capacity to choose flexibly on the basis of them. These scenarios are scrutinized minutely in the paper. It is pointed out that Robson ignores several relevant insightful ideas and distinctions that have surfaced in other contemporary evolutionary theorizing. A somewhat different picture of human behavior emerges once these ideas and distinctions are taken seriously

MICRO-Foundations in Strategic Management: Squaring Coleman's Diagram

Abell, Felin and Foss argue that "macro-explanations" in strategic management, explanations in which organizational routines figure prominently and in which both the explanandum and explanans are at the macro-level, are necessarily incomplete. They take a diagram (which has the form of a trapezoid) from Coleman, Foundations of Social Theory, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass.)/London, (1990) to task to show that causal chains connecting two macro-phenomena always involve "macro-to-micro" and "micro-to-macro" links, links that macro-explanations allegedly fail to recognize. Their plea for micro-foundations in strategic management is meant to shed light on these "missing links". The paper argues that while there are good reasons for providing micro-foundations, Abell, Felin and Foss's causal incompleteness argument is not one of them. Their argument does not sufficiently distinguish between causal and constitutive relations. Once these relations are carefully distinguished, it follows that Coleman's diagram has to be squared. This in turn allows us to see that macro-explanations need not be incomplete

Why the Economic Conception of Human Behaviour Might Lack a Biological Basis

In several recent papers Arthur Robson sketches evolutionary scenarios in order to explain why we humans evolved hard-wired utility functions and the capacity to choose flexibly on the basis of them. These scenarios are scrutinized minutely in the paper. It is pointed out that Robson ignores several relevant insightful ideas and distinctions that have surfaced in other contemporary evolutionary theorizing. A somewhat different picture of human behavior emerges once these ideas and distinctions are taken seriously

Why the economic conception of human behabiour might lack a biological basis

In several recent papers Arthur Robson sketches evolutionary scenarios in order to explain why we humans evolved hard-wired utility functions and the capacity to choose flexibly on the basis of them. These scenarios are scrutinized minutely in the paper. It is pointed out that Robson ignores several relevant insightful ideas and distinctions that have surfaced in other contemporary evolutionary theorizing. A somewhat different picture of human behavior emerges once these ideas and distinctions are taken seriously

Why the economic conception of human behabiour might lack a biological basis

In several recent papers Arthur Robson sketches evolutionary scenarios in order to explain why we humans evolved hard-wired utility functions and the capacity to choose flexibly on the basis of them. These scenarios are scrutinized minutely in the paper. It is pointed out that Robson ignores several relevant insightful ideas and distinctions that have surfaced in other contemporary evolutionary theorizing. A somewhat different picture of human behavior emerges once these ideas and distinctions are taken seriously

MICRO-FOUNDATIONS IN STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT: SQUARING COLEMAN’S DIAGRAM

In a series of joint papers, Teppo Felin and Nicolai J. Foss recently launched a microfoundations project in the field of strategic management. Felin and Foss observe that extant explanations in strategic management are predominantly collectivist or macro. Routines and organizational capabilities, which are supposed to be properties of firms, loom large in the field of strategic management. Routines figure as explanantia in explanations of firm behavior and firm performance, for example. Felin and Foss plead for a replacement of such macro-explanations by micro-explanations (viz. explanations in terms of individual action and interaction). Such a replacement is needed, Felin and Foss argue, because macro-explanations are necessarily incomplete: they miss out on crucial links in the causal chain that connect macro phenomena with each other. I argue that this argument is flawed. It is based on a doubtful if not outright incorrect understanding and use of Coleman’s diagram. In a sense to be explained below, only if Coleman’s diagram is squared it can accurately account for the relations between individual action and interaction, routines and firm behavior and firm performance. Once Coleman’s diagram is squared, one can see why and how macro-explanations need not miss out on any link in the causal chains that connect macro phenomena. Micro-analyses are still needed, not to highlight and specify causal links that macro-explanations miss out on, but to check whether the many properties that are ascribed to routines in macro-explanations of firm behavior are warranted