A Theory of the Cultural Evolution of the Firm: The Intra-Organizational Ecology of Memes

2003 ◽  
Vol 24 (8) ◽  
pp. 1309-1352 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Weeks ◽  
Charles Galunic

In this article, we propose a theory of the cultural evolution of the firm. We apply cultural and evolutionary thinking to the questions posed by theories of the firm: What are firms and why do they exist? We argue that firms are best thought of as cultures, as social distributions of modes of thought and forms of externalization. Using the term ‘meme’ to refer collectively to cultural modes of thought (ideas, beliefs, assumptions, values, interpretative schema, and know-how), we describe culture as a social phenomenon, patterns of symbolic communication and behavior that are produced as members of the group enact the memes they have acquired as part of the culture. Memes spread from mind to mind as they are enacted and the resulting cultural patterns are observed and interpreted by others. The uncertainties of interpretation and the possibilities of reinterpretation and recontextualization create variation in the memes as they spread. Over time, firms evolve as a process of the selection, variation, and retention of memes. Our claim is that understanding firms in this way provides a new perspective (what we call the ‘meme’s-eye view’) on the question of why we have the firms we have and, by allowing us to shed the functionalist assumptions shared by both economics and knowledge-based theories of the firm, makes possible a genuinely descriptive, as opposed to normative, theory of why we have the firms that we have.

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Hirshleifer ◽  
Siew Hong Teoh

AbstractEvolved dispositions influence, but do not determine, how people think about economic problems. The evolutionary cognitive approach offers important insights but underweights the social transmission of ideas as a level of explanation. The need for asocialexplanation for the evolution of economic attitudes is evidenced, for example, by immense variations in folk-economic beliefs over time and across individuals.


2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Wade

<p class="p1"><span class="s1"><strong>Resumen </strong></span>| En este trabajo quiero presentar una cronología convencional del concepto raza que marca un movimiento en el cual raza cambia de ser una idea basada en la cultura y el medio ambiente, a ser algo biológico, inflexible y determinante, para luego volver a ser una noción que habla de la cultura<span class="s2"><strong>.</strong></span>Resumo cómo la idea de raza ha cambiado a través del tiempo, mirando necesariamente el rol que ha desempeñado la ciencia, y enfocando los diferentes discursos de índole <em>natural-cultural </em>sobre los cuerpos, el medio ambiente y el comportamiento, en los cuales las dimensiones culturales y naturales siempre coexisten<span class="s2"><strong>.</strong></span>“La naturaleza” no puede ser entendida solamente como “la biología” y ni la naturaleza ni la biología necesariamente implican sólo el determinismo, la fijeza y la inmutabilidad Estar abiertos a la coexistencia de la cultura y la naturaleza y a la mutabilidad de la naturaleza nos permite ver mejor el ámbito de acción del pensamiento racial.</p><p class="p1"><strong><em>Race, Science and Society</em></strong></p><p class="p1"> </p><p class="p2"><span class="s1"><strong>Abstract </strong></span>| In this article I present and critique a standard chronology of race as, first, a concept rooted in culture and environment, and later in human biology and determinism, and finally back to culture alone<span class="s2"><strong><em>.</em></strong></span>I will outline changing understandings of race over time, with some attention to the role of science, broadly understood, and on the continuing but changing character of race as a natural-cultural discourse about organic bodies, environments and behavior, in which both cultural and natural dimensions always co-exist<span class="s2"><strong><em>.</em></strong></span>“Nature” is not to be understood simply as “biology,” and neither nature nor biology necessarily imply the fixity and determination that they are often assumed nowadays to involve<span class="s2"><strong><em>.</em></strong></span>Being open to the co-existence of culture and nature and the mutability of the latter allows us to better comprehend the whole range of action of racial thinking.</p>


2021 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-119
Author(s):  
Xinming Xia ◽  
Wan-Hsin Liu

AbstractThis paper analyses how China’s investments in Germany have developed over time and the potential impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in this regard, based on four different datasets, including our own survey in mid-2020. Our analysis shows that Germany is currently one of the most attractive investment destinations for Chinese investors. Chinese state-owned enterprises have played an important role as investors in Germany — particularly in large-scale projects. The COVID-19 pandemic has had some negative but rather temporary effects on Chinese investments in Germany. Germany is expected to stay attractive to Chinese investors who seek to gain access to advanced technologies and know-how in the future.


Author(s):  
Irwin Irwin ◽  
Doddy Yuono

The pandemic caused by the corona virus has changed the lifestyle of humans, both directly and indirectly, especially generation Z in Jakarta. The way humans meet their primary needs also changes over time. Many of generation Z decide to shop online to meet their individual needs. Generation Z defines balance as one of the things that is seen in living life, including meeting their needs and interacting with others. The Future Market in Gondangdia exists as a forum that provides space for buying and selling transactions to be more interactive, creative, flexible, and in accordance with health protocols. Through dis-programming, combining creative buying and selling programs and public space as one unit in a design is one of the methods used in designing architectural programs. The combination of the two programs creates an equal space with alternate uses depending on time. The emerging market typology method and its relation to Z generation architecture and behavior become a design strategy in designing. This provides an innovative and interactive buying and selling space according to the needs of generation Z. Keywords: Buy and sell spaces; Public spaces; Future markets; Generation Z; Buy and sell; Dis-programming AbstrakPandemi yang disebabkan oleh virus korona telah mengubah gaya hidup manusia, baik secara langsung maupun tidak langsung, khususnya generasi Z di Jakarta. Cara manusia dalam memenuhi kebutuhan primernya pun berubah seiring berjalannya waktu. Banyak dari generasi Z memutuskan untuk berbelanja online untuk memenuhi kebutuhannya masing-masing. Generasi Z mendefinisikan keseimbangan sebagai salah satu hal yang dilihat dalam menjalani kehiduoan termasuk dalam memenuhi kebutuhannya dan berinteraksi dengan sesamanya. Melalui dis-programming memadukan program jual beli kreatif dan ruang publik sebagai satu kesatuan di dalam sebuah desain merupakan salah satu metodw yang digunakan dalam perancangan program arsitektur. Perpaduan kedua program tersebut menciptakan sebuah ruang yang sama dengan penggunaanya bergantian tergantung oleh waktu. Metode tipologi pasar yang berkembang dan kaitannya dengan arsitektur dan perilaku generasi Z menjadi strategi desain dalam merancang. Hal ini memberikan ruang jual beli yang inovatif dan interaktif sesuai dengan kebutuhan generasi Z.


DIALOGO ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 280-289
Author(s):  
Ionuț Vlădescu

"Time has always been one of the top priorities and permanent concerns of humanity. It is a controversial and difficult subject to the frame by the philosophers of Antiquity and by the scientists of our day. The problem of defining time has raised questions about the essence, origin, content, meaning and value of time. Studies of Time represent a complex and ever-actual subject. Over time, different attempts to define time have been made, all referring only to a certain kind of time and not to time itself. In this regard, Solomon Marcus said the following: “As easily as we intuit it, as difficult as we conceptualize it, no one has been able to define it”[1], showing the difficulty of trying to define this strange impenetrable category. Thus, people know how to quantify the time elapsed between two events, but they do not know how to define it or explain time as a “moment.”[2] To live time is natural and easy, but when it is meant to be questioned and discussed, it turns into a misleading, imprecise, even more complex matter. “Even the modern attempts of time measurement, which today seems to us to be a common fact, has a history of the most complicated and contradictory thinking “[3]. The questions: what is time? and does Eternity exist? remain the main work paradigm of thought for Contemporary Society."


2021 ◽  
Vol 44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oleg Urminsky

Abstract The proposed theory is broad enough to accommodate the reduction or elimination of prior influences by a variety of acts symbolizing separation (including cleansing). However, it does not account for stability in psychological variables, and is contradicted by widely documented stability in people's actual attitudes and behavior over time, in multiple domains, despite people's pervasive everyday acts of symbolic separation.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rodrigo P. Rocha ◽  
Loren Koçillari ◽  
Samir Suweis ◽  
Michele De Filippo De Grazia ◽  
Michel Thiebaut de Schotten ◽  
...  

ABSTRACTThe critical brain hypothesis states that biological neuronal networks, because of their structural and functional architecture, work near phase transitions for optimal response to internal and external inputs. Criticality thus provides optimal function and behavioral capabilities. We test this hypothesis by examining the influence of brain injury (strokes) on the criticality of neural dynamics estimated at the level of single subjects using whole-brain models. Lesions engendered a sub-critical state that recovered over time in parallel with behavior. Notably, this improvement of criticality depended on the re-modeling of specific white matter connections. In summary, personalized whole-brain dynamical models poised at criticality track neural dynamics, alteration post-stroke, and behavior at the level of single subjects.


Author(s):  
Loredana TEREC-VLAD ◽  

We are human beings, and what distinguishes us from other beings is the anguish of finitude, the reason, the articulate language, and so on. Associating and forming groups are the characteristics specific to the human beings, because since the antiquity as it has been said that we were social beings. Communication occupies an important place nowadays. Whether written, oral, internal or external, the communication is essential nowadays. In this context, Anca Raluca Purcaru brings to the fore a new perspective in terms of communication, through her work ”Elemente de comunicare simbolică” (“Elements of symbolic communication”), published by the Lumen Publishing House of Iasi.


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