Culture and institutions: a review of Joel Mokyr's A Culture of Growth

This is a review of Joel Mokyr's fascinating book entitled A Culture of Growth. The work is summarized, noting its focus on Darwin-style evolutionary explanations of cultural change. But Mokyr's emphasis on cultural entrepreneurs and positive feedbacks in the procreation of ideas is insufficient to explain the origins of modern economic growth. Too much explanatory weight is placed on too few extraordinary people. It is argued that Mokyr's analysis should be extended, to bring the evolution of institutions, as well as the evolution of culture, into the picture at an additional level. The role of inter-state rivalry and exogenous shocks has also to be underlined. This kind of analysis can be developed within the framework of generalized Darwinism, which Mokyr himself adopts. This is a major and highly stimulating book.

Observations on the leadership of the pharmaceutical and medical technology industry from a generalized Darwinism perspective

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to identify leadership behaviours that appear to be salient in life science firms and to explain them as Darwinian adaptations to the particular characteristics of that industry. Design/methodology/approach This work used a pragmatist, inductive, mode 2 research methodology. The method used semi-structured, laddered, qualitative interviews with 23 individuals from 22 firms in the pharmaceutical and medical technology sectors. Findings The work found four aspects of the industry’s external environment that, collectively, distinguish it from other sectors. Further, it found four leadership behaviours that appear to be strongly characteristic of the industry. Further analysis revealed critical antecedents of these behaviours in the form of micro-foundations. Finally, these behaviours and their antecedents appeared to be a Darwinian adaptation to selection pressures created by the external environment. Research limitations/implications The findings of this work are limited to the life sciences sector and do not support generalization beyond this sector. The work has three implications. Firstly, that leadership behaviours can be seen as at least partly sector-specific. Secondly, that the specificity of leadership behaviours appears related to identifiable characteristics of the industry environment. Thirdly, that the principles of generalized Darwinism provide a useful lens for understanding leadership behaviour in this sector. Practical implications This work implies that leadership training and development should recognize the specific industry context of the leader and not assume that leadership behaviour is a general, non-specific set of behaviours. Further, the work implies that appropriate leadership can be more readily enabled by paying attention to certain micro-foundations. Originality/value This work is original in two ways. Firstly, it addresses the leadership behaviours of the life sciences sector specifically. No previous work has done this. Secondly, it applies generalized Darwinism to the topic of leadership, which has not been attempted previously.

The business model as a generative replicator

This paper proposes a new conceptualization of business model (BM) that rigorously exploits the important insights this notion offers and links them to related views developed in economics and business studies. We develop the foundations of a BM concept consistent with the principles of generalized Darwinism (GD) and with contributions already developed within this framework. Thus, we demonstrate the relevance of GD as a unifying framework for developing the evolutionary theory of firm and industry. We suggest analysing BM as a generative replicator hosted by the firm, which structures interactions between the members of this organization and the social entities of its industrial environment. We argue that GD allows us to clarify the nature and boundaries of the BM concept and to specify its relationships to other key evolutionary concepts, such as organizational routines.

演化思維與社會理論：以Steven Pinker與Jared Diamond的暴力論述為例

<p>Steven Pinker和Jared Diamond先後提出「現代社會較傳統社會和平」的觀點，並大量使用（演化）生物學與認知科學概念來建構理論，引發社會學、人類學界的許多批評。部分爭議來自於他們將一般被視為生物學範疇的演化思維運用於解釋人類社會。然而，近年來的許多研究已告訴我們：以變異、遺傳（複製）、選擇等抽象原則構成的「一般化達爾文主義」等理論架構，已能應用於生物現象「之外」的人文社會現象。據此，本文藉助「一般化達爾文主義」的架構，細緻地勾勒Pinker和Diamond如何將演化思維應用在暴力理論，並處理人文社會學界對他們的批評。此外，本文也嘗試提出演化思維可能如何啟發社會科學界對暴力與現代性等議題的思考。</p> <p>&nbsp;</p><p>Steven Pinker and Jared Diamond successively advanced the thesis that modern society is more peaceful than traditional society. They employed extensive arguments from evolutionary biology and cognitive science to develop their theories, which have received criticism from sociologists and anthropologists alike. Some believe that employing evolutionary theory to explain human society is highly controversial. Nevertheless, &ldquo;generalized Darwinism,&rdquo; a framework characterized by three abstract principles variation, inheritance, and selection has been applied to other disciplines. Thus, on the basis of a framework of generalized Darwinism, this study illustrates how Pinker and Diamond construct theories of violence through evolutionary thinking and how they are criticized by sociologists and anthropologists. Additionally, in this paper, evolutionary thinking is highlighted as an inspiration for reconsidering violence, modernity, and their interrelation.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p>

Empirical Analysis of a Generalized Darwinism Triggered Theory of Evolutionary Marketing Research

.

Proposing a Generalized Darwinism-Based Theory of Evolutionary Marketing Research for Non-Linear Marketing Contributions: Theoretical Analysis, Conceptual Framework and Research Agenda

This research aimed to formulate an innovative conceptual model of why and how the marketing research creed and process should evolve and proceed to live up to the emerging high ends of marketing in theory and practice. The new conceptual framework adopted an interdisciplinary approach through striving to build an evolutionary marketing research theory that is triggered by a generalized Darwinism intellectual paradigm with special emphasis on fulfilling nonlinear marketing contributions as a highly desirable and yet demanding modern marketing destination. Apart from substantive theoretical analysis of a widely relevant variety of academic literature, the conceptual model was further grounded on exploratory evidence on marketing research panels as arguably creative and insightful empirical context in the form of analysis of secondary data and qualitative research on the world class adoption of panels by best practices of the global marketing research industry. The paper concluded with a detailed road map for a research agenda through three formulated research propositions and a planned research methodology for rigorous real data-driven testing and subsequent refinement of the proposed intelligentsia of the conceptual model.