Beyond Darwin: The Potential of Recent Eco-Evolutionary Research for Organizational and Information Systems Studies

Abstract

Theoretical studies that actually propose to use evolutionary paradigms in organizational/management studies are quite rare, as well as field studies explicitly adopting them. Moreover, these rare writings tend to refer to classical, “Darwin+Mendel+DNA” thought, surprisingly overlooking the last decades’ advancements in evolutionary research, although these recent studies are progressively explaining complex phenomena, which Darwin’s model did not encompass. This paper identifies three streams within recent evolutionary research, whose adoption may result in useful innovation for management, organizational and information system research. These streams of studies present evolutionary, ecological and social processes in an integrated fashion, providing strong frameworks to understand learning processes, procedure creation, flexibility, decision making, networks evolution, cooperation, and the role of relationships, moods and nonrational triggers in change processes. This paper suggests that deeper insights into these factors not only would let us better understand how organizations evolve, but would also give us hints for building organizations which are more compatible with human nature.