Carolina QuotesNatural selection, as it is actually used in evolutionary population biology, serves mainly as an optimization process. In fact, the reasoning that underlies much evolutionary biology often strikes social scientists as strongly reminiscent of neoclassical economics.
Michael T. Hannan Connected to the Carolinas
Source
p. 19
- work
- Organizational ecology, 1989
- year
- 1989
- locator
- p. 19
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“Natural selection, as it is actually used in evolutionary po…” Michael T. Hannan. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-CB6186A717. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/cb6186a717
More from Michael T. Hannan
Once standards of procedures and the allocation of tasks and authority become the subject of normative agreements, the cost of change greatly increased. Normative agreements constrain adaptation in at least two ways. First, they provide a justification and an organizing principle for those elements that wish to resist reorganization (i.e. they can resist in terms of a shared principle). Second, normative agreements preclude the serious consideration of many alternative responses.
We argue that in order to deal with the various inertial pressures the adaptation perspective must be supplemented with a selection orientation. We consider first two broad issues that are preliminary to ecological modelling. The first concerns appropriate units of analysis. Typical analyses of the relation of organizations to environments take the point of view of a single organization facing an environment.
The existing literature usually stresses the capacity of organizations to learn about and adapt to uncertain, changing environments. We think this emphasis is misplaced. The most important issues about the applicability of evolutionary-ecological theories to organizations concern the timing of changes. Learning and adjusting structure enhance the chance of survival only if the speed of response is commensurate with the temporal patterns of relevant environments.