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Recent criticisms of organizational science theory have lamented a lack of depth and a growing “maturity” that is impeding empirical advances. The purpose of this paper is to propose that organizational scientists can address this problem by embracing “evolutionary awareness” (EA). EA builds on theories and constructs developed in the evolutionary sciences that serve to add depth to theory building.

The design of the paper is first to introduce the concept of EA and identify its four key constructs. Next, the authors apply EA to three areas of research within organizational science: human motivation, interpersonal communication and leadership. The authors’ intent is to show that EA constructs extend and deepen traditional organizational science theorizing. Thereby, the authors show that the problems noted above, i.e., lack of depth and maturing theories, can be addressed by embracing EA.

The findings are that EA substantially enhances and freshens theorizing in the organizational sciences in the areas of human motivation, communication and leadership. By extension, other areas of interest will also benefit by embracing the EA perspective.

The implications of the research are many. Organizational scientists can advance theory building, research and practical prescriptions by embracing EA. They can also engage in interdisciplinary research programs with scholars in the evolutionary sciences eager to see their work having practical implications. The limitation of this work is that the authors were only able to show a limited application of EA to three areas of interest to organizational science scholars.

The practical implications of this research are potentially far reaching. At this very moment, scholars in a wide array of disciplines are re-casting their views of humanity, cognition, values and other constructs based on the acceptance of evolution and its primary mechanism, variation and selection based on consequences. These changes will usher in new ideas about leadership, work-life balance, organizational purpose and many others.

A much-needed “consilience” across the human sciences through embracement of the EA perspective may provide insights that will advance human flourishing in organizations and beyond. The authors believe that an increasingly veridical understanding of humanity will produce substantial social impact.

This work will provide an encompassing perspective that will assist organizational scholars in advancing their theory building and research questions. A much-needed “consilience” across the human sciences may provide insights that will advance human flourishing in organizations and beyond.

This paper aims to explain how the dynamic demand environment influences strategic firm behavior along an industry’s evolutionary path. A conceptual gap concerning the influence of demand-side environmental factors (vis-à-vis changes in technology and policy) on firms’ strategic choices motivates the theory developed herein. The paper’s contribution to the literature on “evolutionary perspective in strategy” also addresses an important gap in the emerging literature on “strategy dynamics”.

The conceptual framework in this paper features a dynamic demand environment that provides the structural context for firms’ strategic choices. It conceptualizes demand-side competence as a mediating firm-specific construct to explain the endogenous relationship between the characteristics of the demand environment and firms’ path dependent demand-side investments.

A review of the literature on evolutionary perspective in strategy reveals an important conceptual gap concerning the structural determinants of dynamic firm behavior. There is no explanation of the endogenous relationship between dynamic demand structure, firms’ dynamic demand-side competence, and temporally heterogeneous strategic choices.

The demand-side explanation of how idiosyncratic firm behavior is endogenously determined, with both structural characteristics (demand structure) and firm competences (demand-side competence), addresses an important conceptual gap. The novelty of the theory developed herein lies in its explication of the effect of dynamic demand environment on the evolution of idiosyncratic strategic firm behavior – entry, investment and exit – along the evolutionary path of an industry. The theory developed herein not only explains the effect of both determinants of idiosyncratic strategic firm behavior – the external industry environment (dynamic market structure) and internal firm environment (dynamic firm competences) – but also explains how the determinants evolve along the industry’s lifecycle.

Corporate entrepreneurship is a process of organizational change within established firms, which involves creation, transformation and/or the development of an entrepreneurial philosophy (Covin & Miles, 1999; Guth & Ginsberg, 1990; Schendel, 1990; Sharma & Chrisman, 1999; Zahra, 1993). Researchers and executives alike emphasize the importance of change in corporate entrepreneurship. According to Stevenson and Jarillo-Mossi (1986, p. 14), “If a company wishes to continue to be entrepreneurial, it must convince everyone that change is the company’s overriding goal,” or, as stated by Michael Dell, “The only constant in our business is that everything is changing” (Brown & Eisenhardt, 1998, p. 1).

Advanced Electronic Medical Records (EMR) provide many potential benefits to hospitals. However, because of their broad scope, many stakeholders deal with the EMR and a continuous effort has to be made to keep up with internal and external change. Therefore, hospitals need to deliberately shape their organizational competencies considering the pursuit of alignment, i.e. making sure that the EMR remains optimally aligned with strategies, goals and needs of the hospital and its stakeholders. This paper aims to investigate the evolutionary paths of these alignment competencies and their drivers, from a theoretical perspective of co-evolutionary information systems alignment (COISA).

This paper reports on a longitudinal multiple case study of three Dutch hospitals which each recently implemented an advanced EMR system. The authors conducted 35 in-depth interviews in 2 phases (before and after go-live of the EMR), and studied documentation related to the EMR implementations.

The findings show that each hospital's COISA capability shows a different evolutionary path. However, two of the three case hospitals ended up coordinating part of their COISA capability to an ecosystem level, i.e. they incorporated other hospitals using the same EMR system to coordinate their alignment efforts, either from an operational perspective, or in terms of orchestration and strategy. The found evolutionary paths' key drivers include “stakeholder initiative”, “accumulating experience”, “driving events” and “emerging issues”.

The findings help healthcare practitioners to deliberately shape their organization's COISA capability in pursuit of EMR alignment. Furthermore, the authors add to the knowledge base on co-evolutionary approaches to alignment through the longitudinal approach.

The politically laden nature of postdisaster recovery calls for more research on its governance, especially at the micro-scale. Apart from engineering-oriented frameworks, researchers need new theoretical underpinnings. This paper aims to review the development of the evolutionary resilience theory and use it as an analytical framework to evaluate the governance of post-earthquake reconstruction planning in China.

This paper examines how reconstruction planning is governed in the epicenter town of the 2008 Great Sichuan Earthquake, highlighting three key qualities of evolutionary resilience. The authors draw on site investigations, semistructured interviews and analysis of official and unpublished documents from various sources.

This paper finds that despite the absence of specific resilience statements in reconstruction plans of the time, qualities of evolutionary resilience, including social connectedness, flexibility and innovation, were evident in a hybrid and contradictory reconstruction planning system. In this respect, resilience thinking appears in Chinese planning earlier than generally assumed. This paper suggests that this manifestation of resilience was the result of an instrumental utility in addressing socioeconomic uncertainties in the postdisaster environment and, thus, may not be systematic.

This work enriches the understanding of recovery governance from an evolutionary resilience perspective where existing research is insufficient. It also offers ample practical guidance for similar cases in China and elsewhere.

This chapter aims to identify the impact of misbelief and heuristics on the engagement of giggers and customers with gigging organisations. This is of value due to the plethora of gigging opportunities and our lack of knowledge about how and why people choose to take up these opportunities. In addition, the gigs may frequently go unrecorded with payments made through systems such as PayPal which can allow international payments to be made without remittances. This chapter utilises some of the primary evolutionary theories to explore the efficacy and conflict in communications between gigging organisations, their customers and providers (giggers). Those selected are: misbelief in the conscious mind; and heuristics, such as the availability and confirmatory heuristics in the unconscious mind. Misbelief is addressed as a spandrel, and heuristics are discussed through the lens of fast and frugal approaches. Through a text analysis of 77 international gigging organisations, the messages conveyed are assessed against both evolutionary theory and prior research into the gig economy. The findings are that evolutionary psychology provides a useful framework for analysing these messages, as well as aiding understanding of gigging behaviours. HRM practitioners could make use of this form of analysis to support their design of interactions with giggers to ensure clarity on both sides.

This chapter introduces evolutionary neuroscience and its organizational applications, especially its usefulness for motivation analysis in macrolevel disciplines such as strategic management. Macrolevel organizational disciplines have mostly lacked a theory of motivation beyond self-interest assumptions, which fail to explain many important macrolevel organizational phenomena. Evolutionary neuroscience provides an empirically grounded, parsimonious perspective on the human brain and brain evolution which helps clarify the profound complexities of motivation. Evolutionary neuroscience’s theory of the physiological causes of self- and other-interested motivation can support better macrolevel motivation analysis and unify disparate, potentially conflicting motivation theories. Examples are offered of how neuroscience-based motivation theory can support more comprehensive strategic management analysis of competences and competitive advantage.

The purpose of this paper is to determine how high-tech firms should choose between independent research and development and technology introduction as well as to ascertain the effects of the three elements of competitive dynamics on the evolution of innovative behavior-based decisions and competitive results.

This paper describes the construction of an evolutionary game model and a multi-agent-based model of innovative behavior-based decisions by heterogeneous high-tech firms. The models are used to analyze the evolution path and evolutionarily stable strategy of innovative behavior-based decisions. In addition, multi-agent-based simulation is used to gain insight into the effects of competitive dynamics on the dynamic evolution of innovative behavior-based decisions.

This paper reveals four evolutionary equilibrium states of the innovation behavior-based decisions of high-tech firms. Based on the findings, these overall evolutionary trends are not affected by the timing of competitive market entry or the intensity of competition. In addition, simulated evidence is added that the timing of competitive market entry is an important factor affecting market-leading innovative strategies and dynamic competition results, and competition intensity is closely related to the evolutionary speed of innovation behavior-based decisions.

The key contribution of this paper is its new view of innovative behavior-based decisions from a competitive dynamics perspective. The new competitive dynamics-based framework for innovative behavior-based decisions of high-tech firms proposed in the paper can resolve the problem of obtaining a sustainable competitive advantage for high-tech firms in a competitive dynamics context.

This study aims to examine how evolutionary and ecological forces shape the market strategy and performance of firms after their organizational form was changed by exogenous shock.

Hypotheses are developed based on both evolutionary and ecological perspectives and tested using fixed effect logistics models and a sample of 3,110 firms that were privatized during 1998–2007.

I find that once the organizational form of firms is changed, the market strategy of organizations is shaped by the population density of their old and new organizational forms in their existing market. Moreover, such a market strategy enhances the survival chance of firms.

This study contributes to organizational evolution literature by unpacking the evolution process when exogeneous shock to organizational form takes place. It advances both evolutionary economics and organization ecology theory through integrating them to understand the evolution process of organizations. This study also contributes to the privatization literature through examining the ecological forces that shape the restructuring strategy of firms after privatization and the performance implications of such restructuring.

The paper aims to consider the underlying premises of Peter Drucker's managerial writing and focuses on three main aspects: humans and relations, an evolutionary perspective and a pragmatic perspective. These ontological views are taken to a new level and applied to explore the world of networked firms.

The paper is a conceptual contribution based on a literature study by the author.

An examination of Drucker's ontology shows how his world perspective led him to an understanding of managers and organisations. The three elements of his ontology discussed are applied to research in business networks.

The paper argues for research on human perspectives of business relationships and networks, particularly of issues such as time, timing, partner integration, relational and network embeddedness, network sensing, network horizons, and network identity.

Drucker's ontological view enabled him to make pronouncements that cut through to the truth of reality in our organisationally shaped world. Understanding Drucker's ontology provides managers with ways to deepen their understanding of an individual's role at every level within an organisation.

The linking of Drucker's ontology to research on new ways to organise and manage networked firms opens areas of future research.