Denise E. Dollimore

Untangling the Conceptual Issues Raised in Reydon and Scholz’s Critique of Organizational Ecology and Darwinian Populations:

Reydon and Scholz raise doubts about the Darwinian status of organizational ecology by arguing that Darwinian principles are not applicable to organizational populations. Although their critique of organizational ecology’s typological essentialism is correct, they go on to reject the Darwinian status of organizational populations. This paper claims that the replicator-interactor distinction raised in modern philosophy of biology but overlooked for discussion by Reydon and Scholz provides a way forward. It is possible to conceptualize evolving Darwinian populations providing that the inheritance mechanism is appropriately specified. By this approach, adaptation and selection are no longer dichotomized, and the evolutionary significance of knowledge transmission is highlighted.

Darwinism and Organizational Ecology: A Reply to Reydon and Scholz

In an earlier article published in this journal I challenge Reydon and Scholz’s (2009) claim that Organizational Ecology is a non-Darwinian program. In this reply to Reydon and Scholz’s subsequent response, I clarify the difference between our two approaches denoted by an emphasis here on the careful application of core Darwinian principles and an insistence by Reydon and Scholz on direct biological analogies. On a substantive issue, they identify as being the principal problem for Organizational Ecology, namely, the inability to identify replicators and interactors “of the right sort” in the business domain; this is also shown to be easily addressed with reference to empirical studies of business populations.

The Origin of Organisational Routines: Dispositions of Founding Entrepreneurs

Using an evolutionary approach that conceives of habits and routines as social replicators and their transmission and transformation explained through the mechanisms of variation, selection and retention, this longitudinal study explains the origin of organisational routines by investigating the habits and dispositions of founding entrepreneurs. Findings show that historic and acquired habits play a significant role in shaping routines in fledgling organisations. Founders vary markedly in their capacity to change habits of thought and negotiate new routines. Consistent with recent research in psychology on cognitive interventions, the more successful entrepreneurs were those most aware of and prepared to change their mind-set. Implications for policy makers suggest timely well-targeted entrepreneurship training on cognitive maps and the mind of the strategist. These findings shed new light on the origins question and contribute to the development of an evolutionary framework for management and organisation studies.

Measuring Cognitive and Behavioural Habit Systems of Entrepreneurs

This paper presents a new 29-item measurement instrument designed to assess the impact of habits and behaviour of business founders on organizational routines. Adopting an evolutionary approach, habits and routines are conceived as social replicators with the former impacting the latter. The instrument design is informed by constructs and themes emergent from a prior longitudinal study that captured entrepreneurial thinking and behaviour. The study aims to foreground flexible thinking and ability to change mind-sets. New scales were deployed alongside existing scales for measuring cognitive flexibility and other attributes. The survey provided a small but meaningful data set able to show the impact of habits and behavioural dispositions on business practices and firm performance. Ridgidity of thought impacted performance while self-awareness and ability to change habits of thought was evident and positively impacted firm success. Accordingly, implications for entrepreneurship education include exploration of the mind-set and development of business leaders towards more flexible thinking and behaviour. We have begun the important process of developing a new scale that focuses on the influence of entrepreneurial preferences on business practices, rather than on entrepreneurial competencies per se. This is a novel and important step in entrepreneurship research.