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The purpose of this paper is to critically evaluate the use of the evolutionary approach, and in particular the generalisation of Darwinian principles beyond biology to study socio‐cultural change.

The paper presents a review of developments in generalising Darwinism to study socio‐cultural change, including key criticisms against using the approach. In the process key disagreements between the different conceptual approaches taken by evolutionary scholars, and key criticisms against using an evolutionary approach are highlighted.

It was seen that a number of critics fail to grasp the abstracted concept of Universal and Generalised Darwinism, focusing their arguments on detailed differences between socio‐cultural and biological evolution. Future research within the field should be directed towards building consensus regarding the definitions of key concepts, and using detailed empirical investigations to shed light on the usefulness of the different approaches taken for research and practice.

The key contribution of this paper is the presentation of a critical review of developments made in generalising Darwinism. It is further argued that the universal appeal of the approach offers researchers an opportunity for cross‐fertilising ideas, generating new insights across disciplines and learning from developments being made in parallel fields of study.

This paper aims to show the interrelation and relevancy of the concept and theory of cultural lag to social justice. The conception of social justice, though wide in scope, is applied in this paper to the limited domain of equality of opportunity and fairness with respect to income distribution.Design/methodology/approach – The methodology of this paper is holistic and interdisciplinary, and interrelates the social and the economic in the overall dynamics of general culture evolution.Findings – The “inverted U‐curve hypothesis” of Simon Kuznets implies that a greater equality of income distribution would be forthcoming in an economy characterized by a mature phase of modern economic growth. Empirical evidence demonstrates that such a movement toward greater equality is subject to question. The American experience of the 1920s and the period from 1973 to the present offers evidence to question the U‐curve hypothesis. Contrary to expectations, during these periods income distribution became more unequal. These periods, indicative of maladjustment, are used to demonstrate and serve as examples of cultural lags. The concept and theory of cultural lag exposes the need for prerequisite institutional adjustment. It consequently appears that the American institutional structure, currently directing the economy toward a policy orientation of laissez‐faire and the resulting increased inequality of income distribution, is anachronistic to a modern industrial society oriented toward the goal of social justice.Originality/value – Relevant to the quest of social justice.

Essays a conceptural clarification and theory of the process of economic evolution. Using the Veblenian matrix, conceptualizes the economic process in the framework of culture and its evolution. Economic evolution, as a gestalt, comprises the processes of both economic growth (quantitative statics) and development (qualitative dynamics). The dynamics of culture evolution is founded on the advance of technology which constitutes the “core of culture”. The essence of the process of culture evolution is contained in the dichotomy of useful knowledge. The advance of useful knowledge appears in its application as technology and in its store as culture. The process of economic evolution increases the capacity of culture and thereby enables humankind to take bigger and bigger bites of the infinity of knowledge. Culture evolution, fed by the dynamics of the economic process, offers the potential for an enhanced “consciousness of the cosmos” and as such a conception of human progress.

The aim of this paper is to outline an innovative multilevel conceptual model capable of explaining “karoshi” (death from overwork) and its relationship to molecular-, micro-, meso- and macro-competitive productivity (CP).

A theoretical model, grounded in the evolutionary biological, psychological, organizational and sociological literatures, is provided.

Karoshi is a function of molecular (genetic), micro (individual), meso (organizational) and macro (cultural) evolutionary forces. It is also demonstrated to be a function of time, geography, agri-climate and cultural and ethnic homogeneity.

The analysis is purely theoretical and its theoretically informed hypotheses are not tested empirically. As such, further data-driven research is indicated. Additional analyses are also needed to further unpack the recursive nature of the relationship between karoshi and CP and the subtle differences between genetic evolution and cultural and organizational evolution.

Karoshi-related deaths are a public health epidemic and increasingly a major obstacle to sustainable CP. As such, organizations can leverage these analyses to help them implement interventions aimed at reducing incidents of work-related deaths, not only in Japan, but across the world.

This multilevel conceptual framework makes a unique contribution to the cross-cultural and strategic management literatures. More specifically, it constitutes a new and innovative contribution to one’s current understanding of CP by uniquely integrating biology, psychology, organization studies and cultural studies into one overarching model.

Various theoretical studies were carried out which attempted to identify impacting factors of cultural changes; however, these studies ignored the correlation among other affecting factors all together. In this paper, the authors aim not only to discuss the hidden layers that trigger the cultural changes but also to answer the questions of how to identify the main factors in each layer based on casual layered analysis (CLA), which could have a strong impact in shaping other layers’ factors? What are the dominant metaphors and worldviews that human beings are telling themselves about our universe that influences the future cultural changes?

To answer the questions of “how to identify the main factors in each layer,” the CLA methodology was used to investigate the underlying reasons. CLA takes into account four layers (litany, social systems, dominant discourse and worldviews and metaphors), which could be a tremendous help in identifying the mentioned factors.

The analysis shows that there are some contributing factors such as economy, technology, politics, society, environment, mass media, globalization and migration at the second layer – “social systems layer” – which may trigger cultural changes in first layer “litany”; in addition, in the third and deeper layer two dominant worldviews – materialist/secular and religious affecting the contributing factors in the second layer – were identified. Such worldviews are, in turn, supported by metaphors or perfect stories/myths of the deepest layer.

It can be concluded that because the cultural changes as a reality is composed of different layers, it is important to dig into different layers of reality to comprehend the significant shaping factors of that reality to visualize and make the better future.

Information scientists may find value in studying cultural information evolution and information diffusion through memetics. Information studies in memetics have often found datafication in memetics research difficult. Meanwhile, current memetic scholarship elsewhere is abundant in data due to their focus on Internet artifacts. This paper offers a way to close the datafication gap for information researchers by associating information data with “differences” between memetic documents.

This work offers a joint theory and methodology invested in information-oriented memetics. This methodology of differences is developed from a content analysis of difference on a collection of images with visual similarities.

The authors find that this kind of analysis provides a heuristic method for quantitatively bounding where one meme ends and another begins. The authors also find that this approach helps describe the dynamics of memetic media in such a way that the authors can datafy information or cultural evolution more clearly.

Here the authors offer an approach for studying cultural information evolution through the study of memes. In doing so, the authors forward a methodology of difference which leverages content analysis in order to outline how it functions practically. The authors propose a quantitative methodology to assess differences between versions of document contents in order to examine what a particular meme is. The authors also move toward showing the information structure which defines a meme.

Scholars have primarily focused on how language represents categories. We move beyond this conception to develop a discursive perspective of market categorization focused on how categories are constructed through communicative exchanges. The discursive perspective points to three under-researched mechanisms of category evolution: (1) the interaction between market participants, (2) the power dynamics among market participants and within the discourse, and (3) the cultural and material context in which categories are constructed. In this theoretical paper, we discuss how each of these mechanisms shed light on different phases of category evolution and the methods that could be used to study them.