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

Abstract

Theoretical studies that actually propose to use evolutionary paradigmsin organizational/management studies are quite rare, as well as fieldstudies explicitly adopting them. Moreover, these rare writings tend torefer to classical, ``Darwin+Mendel+DNA{''} thought, surprisinglyoverlooking the last decades' advancements in evolutionary research,although these recent studies are progressively explaining complexphenomena, which Darwin's model did not encompass. This paper identifiesthree streams within recent evolutionary research, whose adoption mayresult in useful innovation for management, organizational andinformation system research. These streams of studies presentevolutionary, ecological and social processes in an integrated fashion,providing strong frameworks to understand learning processes, procedurecreation, flexibility, decision making, networks evolution, cooperation,and the role of relationships, moods and non-rational triggers in changeprocesses. This paper suggests that deeper insights into these factorsnot only would let us better understand how organizations evolve, butwould also give us hints for building organizations which are morecompatible with human nature.