In Defense of Organizational Evolution

A Reply to Reydon and Scholz

Bibliographic Data

ID10927433
AuthorsJohn Lemos (0000-0002-3050-503X, Coe College, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, corresponding author)
Year2009
Volume39
Issue3
Pages463-474
Publication date2009-09-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePhilosophy of the Social Sciences (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0048-3931 • E-ISSN: 1552-7441
PublisherSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0048393109334582
OpenAlexW2050257610
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited4

Organizational ecology applies Darwinian principles of natural selection to understand the evolution of new forms of organizations over time. The idea here is that there are different forms of human organizations, such as different business organizations, religious organizations, political organizations, etc. The growth of new forms of organizations within each of these fields is to be understood in terms of a struggle for existence among organizations with different traits. In a recent article, Reydon and Scholz (2009) argue that this Darwinian view of the evolution of new organizational forms is highly problematic because organizational populations do not exhibit the levels of internal cohesion, isolation, and closure that are necessary for something like Darwinian evolution to occur. In this article, I defend organizational ecology by rebutting the arguments of Reydon and Scholz

Biology · Closure (psychology) · Darwinism · Economics · Epistemology · Evolutionary biology · Management · Organizational Behavior · Organizational culture · Organizational ecology · Organizational learning · Organizational studies · Organizational theory · Political science · Politics · Public relations · Punctuated equilibrium · Social science · Sociology · Business Strategy and Innovation · Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation · Law · Philosophy

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