Dermot Breslin

Reviewing a Generalized Darwinist Approach to Studying Socio-Economic Change

Since the publication of Darwins Origin of Species, a number of scholars have explored the possibility of expanding Darwinism beyond the domain of biology to fields of study as diverse as language, psychology, economics, behaviour and culture. In the last half century, some of these scholars have generalized Darwinian principles to study socio-economic change, with developments being made in the study of technological innovation, organizational diversity, multi-level co-evolution, memetics and organizational change. However, these developments have been hampered not only by disagreement between the scholars themselves, but more broadly by criticisms from a diverse range of established scientific traditions within economics and organization science. In light of these developments, the aim of this paper is to provide a timely critical review of the use of the Generalized Darwinist approach to the study of socio-economic change. In the process, key disagreements between the different conceptual and empirical approaches taken by scholars, and key criticisms against using a Generalized Darwinist approach are highlighted. Building on this review, the paper outlines some key challenges and opportunities facing the Generalized Darwinist approach in the study of technological innovation, organizational change and multi-level co-evolution. The paper concludes with outlines for future research, and in particular further conceptual and empirical developments.

The evolution of entrepreneurial learning

- Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present an evolutionary perspective on entrepreneurial learning, whilst also accounting for fundamental ecological processes, by focusing on the development of key recurring, knowledge components within nascent and growing small businesses. - Design/methodology/approach The paper relates key developments within the organizational evolution literature to research on entrepreneurial learning, with arguments presented in favor of adopting a multi‐level co‐evolutionary perspective that captures and explains hidden ecological process, such as niche‐construction. - Findings It is argued in the paper that such a multi‐level focus on key recurring knowledge components can shed new light on the process of entrepreneurial learning and lead to the cross‐fertilization of ideas across different domains of study, by offering researchers the opportunity to use the framework of variation‐selection‐retention to develop a multi‐level representation of organizational and entrepreneurial learning. - Originality/value Entrepreneurial learning viewed in this way, as a multi‐level struggle for survival amongst competing knowledge components, can provide entrepreneurs with a set of evolutionary heuristics as they re‐interpret their understanding of the evolution of their business.

Small Firm Survival and Innovation An Evolutionary Approach

This paper explores ‘evolution’ as a means of complementing our understanding and interpretation of creative innovation networks in small firms. The abstracted evolutionary mechanisms of variation, selection and retention (VSR) are employed to add a more dynamic interpretative framework to the reading of social networks and group structures. The paper thus presents a lens through which to appreciate creativity as an evolving and shared process. The principal aim of this research is to illustrate otherwise tacit informal relations within a small business through the application of a qualitative approach to social network analysis (SNA) and, in doing so, to present intra-firm relations as central to creativity and innovation – particularly as the organizational structure moves beyond the dominance of the founding entrepreneur.

Generalising Darwinism to study socio‐cultural change

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to critically evaluate the use of the evolutionary approach, and in particular the generalisation of Darwinian principles beyond biology to study socio‐cultural change.Design/methodology/approach – The paper presents a review of developments in generalising Darwinism to study socio‐cultural change, including key criticisms against using the approach. In the process key disagreements between the different conceptual approaches taken by evolutionary scholars, and key criticisms against using an evolutionary approach are highlighted.Findings – It was seen that a number of critics fail to grasp the abstracted concept of Universal and Generalised Darwinism, focusing their arguments on detailed differences between socio‐cultural and biological evolution. Future research within the field should be directed towards building consensus regarding the definitions of key concepts, and using detailed empirical investigations to shed light on the usefulness of the different approac...

Broadening the management team: an evolutionary approach

Purpose – Research has shown that the assimilation of managers into the growing small business is a process fraught with difficulty. The purpose of this paper is to use the evolutionary approach to shed new light on the process in which the management team broadens in a growing small firm.Design/methodology/approach – The paper puts forward a conceptualisation of the units of analysis, namely habits and heuristics. Then using a case study approach, these concepts are operationalised to describe the process in which the management team broadens in a growing porcelain company. An analysis of the findings is then be organised around the evolutionary mechanisms of variation, selection and retention.Findings – It was seen that existing habits, routines and heuristics acted in a policing fashion to resist variation introduced by the newly arriving manger. This resistance led to the failure of the firm to vary practices in line with changes in the marketplace.Research limitations/implications – By focusing on th...

Rule breaking in social care: hierarchy, contentiousness and informal rules

Taking a longitudinal case study approach, this article examines the process of rule breaking in a newly formed UK domiciliary care provider. In this study, the founder acted in such a manner so as to partially decouple the organization from externally imposed institutional rules and regulations, allowing the emergence of informal rules between carer and client. These informal rules increasingly guided the behaviours of care workers over time, resulting in the breach of formal strictures. Building on the dimensions of hierarchy and contentiousness, rule breaking is conceptualized here as a phenomenon which occurs as a result of the tension between competing formal and informal rules, at multiple levels throughout the organizational hierarchy.

Group creativity and the time of the day

ABSTRACT In today’s knowledge-based economies, creativity in higher education has become a central focus for policy-makers. However, developing student creativity is still a challenge for higher education institutions. This paper seeks to contribute to our understanding of the creative processes at play in educational environments by using an experimental design to explore the time-of-day effect on group creativity. Examining 36 groups of university students, Experiment 1 explored differences in creative performance between morning and afternoon, and the optimal time of day for group creative exercises. Experiment 2 comprised 18 groups, and further studied the effect of chronotype on group creativity in the morning versus the afternoon. In both experiments a significant relationship was found between the timing of the group task and creative performance, with a peak in creative fluency around midday. This research thus points to a significant time of day effect in the creative process in groups.

Conceptualizing and Modeling Multi-Level Organizational Co-evolution

This chapter stresses the need for research in organizations to reflect the co-evolutionary and complex nature of the changing world we live in today. We argue that key concepts can be abstracted from biological evolution, and used as a starting point for the conceptual development of such approaches. In addition, computational modeling techniques can be used not only as a tool for shaping this conceptual development, but simulating changing behaviors at multiple levels in real organizations. While a number of researchers have developed co-evolutionary accounts of organizational change, these efforts have been constrained by an entity interpretation of the unit of co-evolution. In this latter view, it is assumed that organizations act as vehicles for bundles of routines, being subject to external selection forces only. As a result change occurs largely through the actions of customers or senior executives. We argue that practice-based interpretations offer an alternative approach in the modeling of co-evolution, unpacking the complexity and interconnected agency within and beyond organizations. Building on these conceptual foundations, we outline key conceptual, empirical, and ethical challenges in developing related computational models. We argue that such simulation models can be used by managers to help them navigate complex future worlds.

Book Review: The Nature of Technology: What it is and How it EvolvesArthurBrian W., The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves, Penguin, London, 2009, £9.99, vii +256 pp

Brian Arthur presents a rich, complex and multilevel conceptualization of technological evolution. First, he views technologies as combinations of components or parts, put together for a particular purpose (such as jet engine technology being composed of a system of sub-parts designed to provide propulsion to aircraft). Second, this broad assembly of parts is organized around a core principle (for example, a jet engine burns fuel), which in turn is derived from a natural phenomenon (such as fuel combustion). In this way, Arthur views technology as a long chain of artefacts starting at the phenomenon and ending in the designed purpose. Third, Arthur adds a further dimension to this hierarchy by introducing a complex interactive human system to describe the mechanisms through which this technological system evolves over time. Variation is introduced as designers and engineers make new combinations of parts to solve new and existing problems. If interpreted as successful, these designs are then selected for use and retained through dissemination within the design and engineering communities. In this way, variation–selection–retention is used to provide the micro-mechanisms through which the wider technology hierarchy evolves. Arthur metaphorically refers to a technology as a metabolism, which uses a complex of interactive phenomena for a specific purpose. However, he stresses that the evolution of this metabolism is not Darwinian (he interprets Darwinism as the gradual step-by-step development of organisms over time through links of common descent). Instead he points out that technology evolves more abruptly through a process of ‘combinatorial evolution’. In this sense, he presents a narrative of technological breakthroughs akin to Kuhn’s conceptualization of scientific revolutions (Kuhn, 1996). This differentiation between gradualism and punctuated change reflects similar opposing positions taken in biology between Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould respectively (see Sterelny, 2007). However, this may represent a false dichotomy with differences in patterns of aggregate change being due to the level of analysis. For instance, McKelvey (1997) points out that, when looking at the micro-level, researchers tend to generate incremental models, whereas ‘macroevolutionists’ generate punctuated models of evolution. In this respect, is it perhaps inevitable that Arthur’s complex multilevel system is viewed as punctuated and abrupt when viewed at the level of the evolving technology? Taking a ‘generalized Darwinian’ perspective (Aldrich et al, 2008), one might further develop Arthur’s conceptualization by examining the process of evolution at each level in the hierarchy of co-evolving systems. Generalized Darwinists argue that the concepts of variation–selection–retention can be abstracted beyond the domain of biology to describe evolution in other domains of study. In this respect, Arthur already appears to have adopted these concepts. However, in addition one needs to identify what is evolving within each co-evolving system or level (Baum and Singh, 1994). Generalized Darwinists put forward the duality of the replicator– interactor, in which the former represents the information content of the unit that becomes copied over time, and the latter the developmental expression of that information (Breslin, 2011). So in biology, genes represent the replicator, and the physical characteristics of the organism the latter. Searching for an equivalent in technological evolution has led to a number of different candidates. Murmann (2003) distinguishes between ideas/knowledge as replicator, and the manifestation of that knowledge in physical artefacts as the corresponding interactor. Mokyr (2000) proposes that the technique behind the technology is the interactor as opposed to the artefact. Arthur hints at the phenomena around which the technology is organized as being the equivalent of the gene. However, it is unclear which evolving system/level he is referring to and what the corresponding interactor might be. In other parts of the book when referring to the human system through which this combinatorial evolution occurs, Arthur discusses the influence of tacit rules and practices used by practising engineers and technologists. He notes that these behavioural rules co-evolve rapidly through the practice of combination. So, for example, a clever new combination of existing components to solve a technological problem may spread much like a meme (Dawkins, 1976). The co-evolution of these practices has clear parallels with evolutionary narratives, which view the evolution of organizations through the variation–selection–retention of routines (Aldrich, 1999; Hodgson and Knudsen, 2010; Nelson and Winter, 1982). In sum, while Arthur’s account highlights the complexity of the process of technological evolution, he does not really commit himself to specifying units of selection or evolution within the multilevel system he presents. It might be argued that this level of precision is needed in order to resolve the issues noted above, and to develop fully a complex multilevel and co-evolving conceptualization of technological evolution, which gives rise to patterns of gradual improvements punctuated by periods of breakthroughs.