Participate in the workshop on Qualitative Methods the Academy of Management in Hawaii, Friday afternoon from 1:00 to 4:00, August 5, 2005. The Panelists are: Robert Burgelman, Diana Day, Deborah Dougherty, Charles Galunic, Johann Peter Murmann, Gabriel Szulanski, and Klaus Weber.
Visit the Discussion Forum for the Event where much additional information will be posted.
I am a big fan of explanations of social phenomena that set forth the precise causal mechanisms that produce them. This book edited by Peter Hedstroem and Richard Swedberg provides a very good introduction to the approach. The only think I don’t like about the piece its believe that all mechanisms in sociology need to refer to individuals. You can download the overview chapter here: Social-mechanism.pdf Click on “More…” for a Table of Contents.
The author of Guns, Germs, and Steel considers why some societies collapse when faced with environmental or political catastrophe, while others soldier on. Malcom Galdwell has published a useful review of the book in the New Yorker .
A hefty percentage of American corporations use personality tests as part of the hiring and promotion process. The tests figure in custody battles and in sentencing and parole decisions. "Yet despite their prevalence-and the importance of the matters they are called upon to decide-personality tests have received surprisingly little scrutiny," Paul writes. We can call… More »
John Searle's book is a must-read for every social scientist. Searle makes the important distinction between observer independent facts (the sun exists independently of any human being observing it) and oberserver dependent facts (money does not exist unless people agree that a sheet of paper is worth a particular amount). This distinction, in my view,… More »
Important Workshop at AOM ’04: Participate in the workshop on Adaptation vs. Selection in Industry Change organized by Jan Rivkin and myself. Panelists are: Bill Barnett, Clayton Christensen, Anita McGahan and Will Mitchell.
Paul Romer gave an interesting interview in Reason Magazine describing in non-technical terms on how ecnomic growth comes about.
This is a talk I gave at a conference New Perspectives on Telecommunications and Pharmaceuticals in Europe and the United States: Conference on Evolutionary Economics:
Conference Program
Good morning. Let me give you a quick road map of my presentation. First, I will discuss where we are in terms of evolutionary economics, beginning with Nelson and Winter, 1982, the key book in this literature. Then I’ll provide a quick review of the ideas behind evolutionary accounts, laying out the requirements for a valid evolutionary explanation. I’ll follow this with a discussion of recent trends in the literature over the last six or seven years, addressing what I believe to be some of the key outstanding issues that should be addressed by the evolutionary perspective. Finally, time-permitting I’ll speculate a little bit about how one can make economics more an evolutionary science, and about what can be done to make evolutionary ideas more accepted.
