Pursuing the evolutionary agenda in economics and management research

This essay first reviews what Nelson and Winter were trying to accomplish when they put forward An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change (Belknap Press, Harvard, 1982). It then does a fast-forward to controversies and contributions in the recent past, and speculates on where the intellectual enterprise might be headed from here. The issues involved in the original motivations are definitely alive and well. Aside from the review of the basic issues behind the NW project, an important theme here is that an evolutionary approach to economics entails a degree of engagement with the realities of business organization and the quest for profit that has no parallel in mainstream economics. Thus it makes sense in retrospect that the evolutionary program has proved more influential in other research fields, including strategic management, technology studies and organization theory, than it is in economics proper. Recent controversies underscore the continuing existence of a challenging research agenda featuring the interactions among the dynamic processes at different levels—individuals, firms and market environments.

[1]  G. Dosi,et al.  Learning how to govern and learning how to solve problems: on the co-evolution of competences, confl , 1995 .

[2]  Michael X Cohen,et al.  Organizational Routines Are Stored as Procedural Memory: Evidence from a Laboratory Study , 1994 .

[3]  Jan W. Rivkin,et al.  Balancing Search and Stability: Interdependencies Among Elements of Organizational Design , 2003, Manag. Sci..

[4]  B. Lundvall.  Product Innovation and User-Producer Interaction , 1985 .

[5]  Lawrence A. Boland,et al.  A Critique of Friedman's Critics , 1979 .

[6]  Constance E. Helfat,et al.  Managerial cognitive capabilities and the microfoundations of dynamic capabilities , 2015 .

[7]  Sidney G. Winter,et al.  Satisficing, Selection, and the Innovating Remnant , 1971 .

[8]  E. Penrose.  The theory of the growth of the firm twenty-five years after , 1960 .

[9]  N. Rosenberg.  The Direction of Technological Change: Inducement Mechanisms and Focusing Devices , 1969, Economic Development and Cultural Change.

[10]  Martha S. Feldman,et al.  Dynamics of Organizational Routines: A Generative Model , 2012 .

[11]  R. Luxemburg.  Accumulation of Capital , 1951 .

[12]  M. Blaug.  The methodology of economics, or, How economists explain , 1980 .

[13]  Felipe A. Csaszar.  An Efficient Frontier in Organization Design: Organizational Structure As a Determinant of Exploration and Exploitation , 2012, Organ. Sci..

[14]  Markus C. Becker.  Handbook of Organizational Routines , 2010 .

[15]  Giovanni Dosi,et al.  Technical Change and Industrial Dynamics as Evolutionary Processes , 2009 .

[16]  R. Nelson.  Research on Productivity Growth and Productivity Differences: Dead Ends and New Departures , 1981 .

[17]  Massimo Egidi,et al.  Routines, Hierarchies of Problems, Procedural Behaviour: Some Evidence from Experiments , 1995 .

[18]  Mark J. Zbaracki,et al.  When Truces Collapse: A Longitudinal Study of Price-Adjustment Routines , 2010, Organ. Sci..

[19]  K. Pavitt,et al.  Knowledge Specialization, Organizational Coupling, and the Boundaries of the Firm: Why Do Firms Know More than They Make? , 2001 .

[20]  Leo Huberman.  The Accumulation of Capital , 1949 .

[21]  Sarah Kaplan.  Truce Breaking and Remaking: The CEO's Role in Changing Organizational Routines , 2015 .

[22]  S. Winter.  Dynamic Capability as a Source of Change , 2008 .

[23]  James A. Mirrlees,et al.  A New Model of Economic Growth , 1962 .

[24]  Sidney G. Winter,et al.  Toward a Neo-Schumpeterian Theory of the Firm , 2006 .

[25]  P. Romer.  Endogenous Technological Change , 1989, Journal of Political Economy.

[26]  P. Adler,et al.  The Role of Affect in Creative Projects and Exploratory Search , 2007 .

[27]  Paul Nightingale,et al.  Muppets and Gazelles: Political and Methodological Biases in Entrepreneurship Research , 2013 .

[28]  Daniel A. Levinthal,et al.  Collective Performance: Modeling the interaction of habit based actions – Supplementary Materials , 2010 .

[29]  A. Alchian.  Uncertainty, Evolution, and Economic Theory , 1950, Journal of Political Economy.

[30]  D. Teece.  Explicating dynamic capabilities: the nature and microfoundations of (sustainable) enterprise performance , 2007 .

[31]  J. March.  The Business Firm as a Political Coalition , 1962, The Journal of Politics.

[32]  G. Dosi,et al.  Production Theory: Accounting for Firm Heterogeneity and Technical Change , 2016 .

[33]  R. Solow.  TECHNICAL CHANGE AND THE AGGREGATE PRODUCTION FUNCTION , 1957 .

[34]  G. Dosi,et al.  PROBLEM-SOLVING BEHAVIOURS, ORGANISATIONAL FORMS AND THE COMPLEXITY OF TASKS , 2000 .

[35]  Giovanni Gavetti,et al.  Evolution Cum Agency: Toward a Model of Strategic Foresight , 2016 .

[36]  C. Freeman.  Economics of Industrial Innovation , 1975 .

[37]  David J. Teece,et al.  Dynamic Capabilities: Routines versus Entrepreneurial Action , 2012 .

[38]  Thorstein Veblen,et al.  Why Economics is not an Evolutionary Science , 1898 .

[39]  Richard R. Nelson.  Commentary on Sidney Winter’s “Toward a neo-Schumpeterian theory of the firm” , 2006 .

[40]  M. Hobday,et al.  Innovation in Complex Systems Industries: the Case of Flight Simulation , 1995 .

[41]  Ron Dare,et al.  The disorder of things: Metaphysical foundations of the disunity of science , 1997 .

[42]  Steven Klepper,et al.  A Reprise of Size and R & D , 1996 .

[43]  S. Winter.  Economic "Natural Selection" and the Theory of the Firm , 1964 .

[44]  C. Freeman.  Technological infrastructure and international competitiveness , 2004 .

[45]  Tony Lawson,et al.  What is this ‘school’ called neoclassical economics? , 2013 .

[46]  W. Dugger.  The Economic Institutions of Capitalism , 1987 .

[47]  Richard R. Nelson,et al.  The Agenda for Growth Theory: A Different Point of View , 1998 .

[48]  Michael G. Jacobides,et al.  Capabilities: Structure, Agency, and Evolution , 2012, Organ. Sci..

[49]  M. Friedman,et al.  The Methodology of Positive Economics , 2010 .

[50]  G. Dosi,et al.  Schumpeter meeting Keynes: A policy-friendly model of endogenous growth and business cycles , 2010 .

[51]  R. Nelson.  Why Schumpeter has had so little influence on today’s main line economics, and why this may be changing , 2012, Journal of Evolutionary Economics.

[52]  Giovanni Dosi,et al.  Division of labor, organizational coordination and market mechanisms in collective problem-solving , 2005 .

[53]  Daniel A. Levinthal,et al.  Looking Forward and Looking Backward: Cognitive and Experiential Search , 2000 .

[54]  David Obstfeld,et al.  Creative Projects: A Less Routine Approach Toward Getting New Things Done , 2012, Organ. Sci..

[55]  R. Thaler.  Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics , 2015 .

[56]  S. Klepper.  Entry, Exit, Growth, and Innovation over the Product Life Cycle , 1996 .

[57]  D. Teece,et al.  DYNAMIC CAPABILITIES AND STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT , 1997 .

[58]  Claudia Werker,et al.  Keith Pavitt and the Invisible College of the Economics of Technology and Innovation , 2004 .

[59]  Jeremy P. Birnholtz,et al.  Organizational Character: On the Regeneration of Camp Poplar Grove , 2007, Organ. Sci..

[60]  高橋 進.  サイアート, マーチの「A Behavioral Theory of the Firm」 , 1995 .

[61]  Constance E. Helfat.  The SMS Blackwell Handbook of Organizational Capabilities , 2003 .

[62]  T. Chartrand,et al.  THE UNBEARABLE AUTOMATICITY OF BEING , 1999 .

[63]  R. Gordon,et al.  Business Leadership in the Large Corporation , 1945 .

[64]  R. Nelson.  National Innovation Systems: A Comparative Analysis , 1993 .

[65]  M. Friedman.  The Methodology of Positive Economics: The methodology of positive economics (1953) , 2009 .

[66]  D. Kahneman.  Thinking, Fast and Slow , 2011 .

[67]  Mie Augier,et al.  Perspective - The Flaring of Intellectual Outliers: An Organizational Interpretation of the Generation of Novelty in the RAND Corporation , 2015, Organ. Sci..

[68]  J. Schumpeter,et al.  The Theory of Economic Development , 2017 .

[69]  Thorbjørn Knudsen,et al.  Design of Decision-Making Organizations , 2010, Manag. Sci..

[70]  C. E. Ayres,et al.  Human Nature and Conduct: An Introduction to Social Psychology , 1922 .

[71]  F. M. Scherer,et al.  Technology, Economic Growth and Public Policy. , 1967 .

[72]  Franco Malerba,et al.  Innovation and the Evolution of Industries: History-Friendly Models , 2016 .

[73]  Sidney G. Winter,et al.  Developing Evolutionary Theory for Economics and Management , 2005 .

[74]  R. Gibbons,et al.  The Handbook of Organizational Economics , 2012 .

[75]  Joan V. Robinson.  What are the questions , 1981 .

[76]  M. Shubik,et al.  A Behavioral Theory of the Firm. , 1964 .

[77]  H. Simon,et al.  A Behavioral Model of Rational Choice , 1955 .

[78]  J. Schumpeter,et al.  Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy , 1943 .

[79]  G. Harcourt,et al.  Retrospectives: Whatever Happened to the Cambridge Capital Theory Controversies? , 2003 .

[80]  Mike Gregory,et al.  What is new in the new industrial policy?A manufacturing systems perspective , 2013 .

[81]  Gino Cattani,et al.  The Value of Moderate Obsession: Insights from a New Model of Organizational Search , 2007, Organ. Sci..

[82]  O. Williamson.  The economic institutions of capitalism , 1985 .

[83]  Michael X Cohen.  Reading Dewey: Reflections on the Study of Routine , 2007 .

[84]  G. Dosi.  Technological Paradigms and Technological Trajectories , 1993 .

[85]  N. Kaldor.  The Irrelevance of Equilibrium Economics , 1972 .

[86]  R. L. Hall,et al.  PRICE THEORY AND BUSINESS BEHAVIOUR , 1939 .

[87]  B. Lundvall.  Introduction to ‘Technological infrastructure and international competitiveness’ by Christopher Freeman , 2004 .

[88]  G. Dosi.  Technological Paradigms and Technological Trajectories: A Suggested Interpretation of the Determinants and Directions of Technical Change , 1982 .

[89]  Constance E. Helfat.  The SMS Blackwell handbook of organizational capabilities : emergence, development, and change , 2003 .

[90]  Steven Klepper,et al.  Experimental Capitalism: The Nanoeconomics of American High-Tech Industries , 2015 .

[91]  T. Kuhn,et al.  The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , 1963 .

[92]  Constance E. Helfat,et al.  Dynamic capabilities : understanding strategic change in organizations , 2007 .

[93]  M. Polanyi.  Personal Knowledge: Towards a post-critical philosophy , 1959 .

[94]  S. Winter.  Habit, Deliberation, and Action: Strengthening the Microfoundations of Routines and Capabilities , 2013 .

[95]  Teppo Felin,et al.  Dynamics of Industry and Innovation: Organizations, Networks and Systems Strategic Organization: a Field in Search of Micro- Foundations Strategic Organization: a Field in Search of Micro-foundations , 2022 .