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- Title
Evolutionary drive: New understandings of change in socio-economic systems.
- Authors
Allen, Peter M.; Strathern, Mark; Baldwin, James S.
- Abstract
The question explored in this paper is how change really occurs in socio-economic systems, based on the ideas of 'evolutionary drive' put forward some years ago (Allen & McGlade, 1987). In this view the evolutionary process is driven by the interplay of processes that create micro-diversity, and the selection operated by the differential dynamics operated by the system. This is seen as an ongoing, continuous process of exploration and experimentation at the underlying microscopic level, leading to a strategic organization and structure at the level above - a longer term emergence at a macroscopic level. In this way, we explain the origins of emergent capabilities, and show that these minimal mechanisms are all that are required to explain (though not predict) the coevolutionary processes occurring in markets, organizations, and indeed in emergent, evolutionary communities of practice. We first establish simple ecological examples, and then provide examples from social and economic systems.
- Subjects
EVOLUTIONARY theories; SOCIOECONOMICS; ORGANIZATION; SOCIOECONOMIC factors; MANAGEMENT
- Publication
Emergence: Complexity & Organization, 2006, Vol 8, Issue 2, p2
- ISSN
1521-3250
- Publication type
Article