2010,19: The firm as a Darwin machine : How Generalized Darwinism can further the development of an evolutionary theory of economic growth

The debate on the ontological foundations of evolutionary economics has reached a stage where discussions of these foundations are increasingly leading to the conclusion that there is a need to move from considerations of the general principles of evolutionary theory to the development of concrete middle-range theories of specific economic phenomena. The purpose of this paper is to engage in such an exercise. I explore to what extent the general principles of generalized Darwinism can further the development of an evolutionary theory of economic growth. I will demonstrate the value of generalized Darwinism in two steps. First, by showing how its explanatory logic helps identify some limitations in the seminal theories of economic growth developed by Schumpeter, Penrose, and Nelson and Winter. Second, by showing how the Darwinian logic helps integrate the strengths of these three theories. The result of this exercise is a theory of the firm as a Darwin machine that better captures the interplay of agency and structure in the accumulation of productive knowledge, which is central to the phenomenon of economic growth that Schumpeter, Penrose, and Nelson and Winter set out to explain

The Emergence and Evolution of the Multidimensional Organization

The article discusses multidimensional organizations and the evolution of complex organizations. The six characteristics of multidimensional organizations, disadvantages of the successful organizational structure that is categorized as a multidivisional, multi-unit or M-form, research by the Foundation for Management Studies which suggests that synergies across business divisions can be exploited by the M-form, a team approach to creating economic value, examples of multidimensional firms such as PricewaterhouseCoopers, and a comparison of various organization types including the matrix form are mentioned

Darwinism, organizational evolution and survival: key challenges for future research

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

Stakeholder Relationships and Social Welfare: A Behavioral Theory of Contributions to Joint Value Creation

Firms play a crucial role in furthering social welfare through their ability to foster stakeholders’ contributions to joint value creation, i.e., value creation that involves a public-good dilemma due to high task and outcome interdependence - leading to what economists have labeled the ‘team production problem’. We build on relational models theory to examine how individual stakeholders’ contributions to joint value creation are shaped by stakeholders’ mental representations of their relationships with the other participants in value creation, and how these mental representations are affected by the perceived behavior of the firm. Stakeholder theory typically contrasts a broadly-defined ‘relational’ approach to stakeholder management with a ‘transactional’ approach based on the price mechanism - and has argued that the former is more likely to contribute to social welfare than the latter. Our theory supports this prediction for joint value creation, but also implies that the dichotomy on which it is based is too coarse-grained: there are three distinct ways to trigger higher contributions to joint value creation than through a ‘transactional’ approach. Our theory also helps explain the tendency for firms and their stakeholders to converge on ‘transactional’ relationships, despite their relative inefficiency in the context of joint value creation

The firm as a Darwin machine: How Generalized Darwinism can further the development of an evolutionary theory of economic growth

The debate on the ontological foundations of evolutionary economics has reached a stage where discussions of these foundations are increasingly leading to the conclusion that there is a need to move from considerations of the general principles of evolutionary theory to the development of concrete middle-range theories of specific economic phenomena. The purpose of this paper is to engage in such an exercise. I explore to what extent the general principles of generalized Darwinism can further the development of an evolutionary theory of economic growth. I will demonstrate the value of generalized Darwinism in two steps. First, by showing how its explanatory logic helps identify some limitations in the seminal theories of economic growth developed by Schumpeter, Penrose, and Nelson and Winter. Second, by showing how the Darwinian logic helps integrate the strengths of these three theories. The result of this exercise is a theory of the firm as a Darwin machine that better captures the interplay of agency and structure in the accumulation of productive knowledge, which is central to the phenomenon of economic growth that Schumpeter, Penrose, and Nelson and Winter set out to explain.Length 35 pages

The explanatory logic and ontological commitments of generalized Darwinism

The recent debate about the value of Darwinism as a source of ontological foundations for evolutionary economics reduces to a disagreement about whether or not the causal logic of Darwinism applies to economic evolution. However, this logic has not yet been fully specified. While the explanantia of Darwinism have been elaborately discussed, the explananda of Darwinism have not been given detailed consideration. It is shown how the specification of its explananda helps generalize Darwinism in a way that avoids biological analogies such as inheritance and replication mechanisms. It is furthermore shown that an explicit consideration of its explananda leads to a generalized Darwinism that acknowledges both the ontological continuity and ontological similarity of all evolutionary processes and that needs to be complemented with multi-level selection logic. The ontological commitments of such a generalized Darwinism are consistent with those that have been proposed in the wider search for ontological foundations in evolutionary economics.generalized Darwinism, ontology, evolutionary theory, evolutionary economics, philosophical foundations,