Work Papers Archive

  • Scaffolding in Economics, Management, and the Design of Technologies

    The goal of this paper is to review the ideas that have been developed to describe the emergence and change of structures in three fields: Economics, Management, and Design of Technologies.  The paper focuses on one empirical setting, the economy, and more specifically how firms, industries, and technologies change over…

  • Middle class as a stabilized dynamic system in economy

    A simple explanation for emergence, evolution and self-destruction of the middle class has been proposed. Lemeray’s diagram, which usually used for analysis predator-pray system, in this case fit for global economy.

  • A Bass Model of Democracy Diffusion 1800-2000

    Political scientists seldom translate system terminology into systems analysis. This article uses Polity IV data to probe system dynamics for studies of the global diffusion of democracy from 1800 to 2000. By analogy with the Bass model of diffusion of innovations (1969), as translated into system dynamics by Sterman (2000),…

  • In Search of How Societies Work: Tribes—The First and Forever Form

    This working paper is the latest in a string of efforts to elaborate a theoretical framework about social evolution, based on how people develop their societies by using four forms of organization: tribes, hierarchical institutions, markets, and networks (see WP 05-05).  A lead-off chapter sketches the entire framework, and a…

  • Replication, Information and Complexity

    This paper considers the development and refinement of the replicator concept. We find that the established definition of replication in terms of the triple conditions of causality, similarity and information transfer is too inclusive. We draw inspiration from the literature on self-reproducing automata to strengthen the notion of information transfer…

  • Tribes, Institutions, Markets, Networks: A Framework about Social Evolution

    This informal preliminary paper outlines a theoretical framework for thinking about social evolution. The framework holds that four major forms of organization lie behind the governance and evolution of all societies across the ages: first tribes, then hierarchical institutions, then markets, and now networks.  While all four were present in…

  • The Eclectic Necessity of an Evolutionary Approach to Entrepreneurship

    This paper explores that application of evolutionary approaches to the study of entrepreneurship. An eclectic approach that aims to highlight the multiple sources of evolutionary thought that frequently remain outside the boundaries of organizational theorizing is used. It is argued that any evolutionary theory of entrepreneurship must appreciate the foundations…

  • Evolutionary Theories of Cultural Change: An Empirical Perspective

    Evolutionary theorizing in the social sciences has a long tradition, going back well before Darwin. Much of contemporary evolutionary theorizing by social scientists about the processes of change at work in various aspects of human culture - for example science, technology, and business organization and practice - is motivated by…

  • The Co-Evolution of Policy and Economic Development: A Discussion

    The practical and philosophical focus of this paper is the link between emergence and intention for economic development, specifically as it relates to the development of technologically innovative regions. Our research questions are embedded in this core focus on intention and emergence of innovative industrial concentrations: Do policy and economic…

  • On Power as a Unifying Concept in the Naturalistic Foundation of the Social Sciences

    Although power is an ubiquitous phenonomen in human societies, the analytical concept of power remains marginal in economics. In this paper I consider a possible radical reorientation of economics which starts out from the methodological premise that economics, the social sciences in general and biology should be integrated into a…

  • Evolution And Organizational Change Within Complex Social Groups

    The origin and development of complex societies - those in which members are functionally specialized and interdependent - has long been the province of cultural evolutionary or “progressive” modes of explanation.  Growth, whether in population, economic scale, or technological prowess, underpins most traditional explanations for increasing social complexity.  More recently,…

  • The Evolutionary Socioecology of Communication

    This paper begins with a brief introduction to multi-process selection theory, to what explains the existing array of alternatives in evolving populations, and to some basic principles of evolutionary ecology. Evolutionary ecology asks, and seeks to answer, the question of under what ecological conditions selection favours what kinds of characteristics…

  • Toward a Systematic Framework for Research on Dominant Designs…

    The concept of a dominant design has taken on a quasi-paradigmatic status in the analysis of the link between technological and industrial dynamics. A review of the empirical literature reveals that a variety of interpretations exist about some aspects of the phenomenon such as its underlying causal mechanisms and its…

  • Evolutionary Theory Revisited: Cognition, Hierarchy, and Capabilities.

    Building on a field study of Polaroid’s transition from analog to digital imaging, this article identifies important lacunae in evolutionary research on capabilities. It argues that this research has focused excessively on the emergent, quasi-automatic nature of capability development, thus neglecting the role of cognition and deliberation. Furthermore, because it…

  • The Coevolution of Industries and Academic Disciplines.

    Based on a five-country historical case study of the synthetic dye industry and the discipline of chemistry, the paper argues that academic disciplines, like industries, change through variation, selection, and retention processes. Using a comparative historical method and drawing on inductive evidence spanning a 60-year period, the study clarifies how…

  • A Layman’s Guide to Evolutionary Economics

    During the last decades we have seen a revival of interest in the works of Joseph Schumpeter and “evolutionary” ideas in economics more generally. This paper presents an overview and interpretation of these developments. Following an introductory discussion of the concepts and ideas (and their origins) the main characteristics of…

  • The Organizational Evolution of Global Technological Competition

    Various industries are marked by rapid technological change and increasingly global competition.  We explain how such developments provide a context for “Red Queen” competition, where organizational learning and competition accelerate each other over time.  Arguing that competition stimulates organizational development, we predict that organizations experiencing a history of competition are…

  • An Entrepreneurial Perspective of Institutional Change.

    Utilizing Kirzner’s theory of entrepreneurial discovery, Schumpeter’s two types of economic responses and the Austrian theory of institutions as building blocks, this paper constructs an entrepreneurial theory of institutional change. Focusing on the coordinating role of human institutions, this paper argues that entrepreneurial extraordinary discovery destroys the stability of institutions…

  • The Vanishing Hand: the Changing Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism.

    In a series of classic works, Alfred Chandler challenged the prediction (implicit perhaps in Adam Smith’s account of the division of labor and the Invisible Hand) that economic growth would always lead to finer market decentralization. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Chandler showed, the visible hand of…

  • The Red Queen in Organizational Creation and Development.

    We synthesize organization learning theory and organizational ecology to predict systematic patterns in the founding and growth of organizations over time.  Our central argument is that competition triggers organizational learning, which in turn intensifies competition that again triggers an adaptive response.  We model this self-exciting dynamic - sometimes referred to…

  • Draft of “Selection Pressure and Organizational Cognition: Implications for the Social Determinants

    We model the effects of Schumpeterian ‘selection pressures’ - in particular Apartheid and the neoliberal ‘market economy’ - on organizational cognition in minority communities, given the special role of culture in human biology. Our focus is on the dual-function social net-works by which culture is imposed and maintained on individuals…

  • Introductory Chapter to “Knowledge and Competitive Advantage: The Coevolution of Firms, Technology,

    This study argues that the creation of productive capabilities underlying successful firms and the institutional context surrounding firms are related through interactive, coevolutionary processes. To induce a dynamic framework for analyzing the sources of competitive advantage, I examine the processes through which German firms became dramatically more successful than their…

  • On the Complexities and Limits of Market Organization.

    The close of the twentieth century saw a virtual canonization of simple market organization as the best, indeed the only really effective, way to organize and govern economic activity. This essay is not to gainsay the present conventional wisdom, but to try to civilize it and nudge it to…

  • Many are Called, but Few are Chosen: An Evolutionary Perspective for the Study of Entrepreneurship.

    More than a decade ago, Low and MacMillan identified three elements indispensable to an understanding of entrepreneurial success: process, context, and outcomes.  Since their critique, three important advances include (a) a shift in theoretical emphasis from the characteristics of entrepreneurs as individuals to the consequences of their actions,  (b) a…

  • Genes, Memes, and Contingency: The Effects of Purposive Action in Mortality Reduction.

    The term “meme” was coined by the biologist Richard Dawkins in 1976 to explain how the transmission of ideas in human society differs from that of genetic materials in living organisms. Although genes and memes both reproduce themselves through imitation, memes can transmit acquired characteristics, allowing them to change quickly.…

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