Seeking Adaptive Advantage: Evolutionary Theory and Managerial Action

Abstract

Observers of outstanding high-technology organizations report that senior managers often set vague goals, embrace simplistic slogans, propel internal teams into cutthroat competition, set up processes but no outcome standards, and permit employees to use time on unapproved projects (Quinn, 1986; Van de Ven, Angle, and Poole, 1989; Nonako, 1988). These practices seem to violate crucial management principles such as setting clear goals, enhancing cooperation, and assuring that each employee efficiently focus on top priorities. In this chapter, I suggest that such high tech practices may not violate good management principles, but illuminate instead a potential integrating framework for managerial action. In particular, I explore a simple evolutionary framework for conceptualizing a wide variety of potentially valuable managerial practices. A basic evolutionary model of an organization envisions it as a collection of routines, or stable bundles of activities. Over time, both intentional and unintentional variation occurs in the routines. Some of the new routines are selected into the ongoing practices. This simple variation-selection-retention cycle repeats continuously (Weick, 1979; Baum, 1988). This cycle can also be seen as a form of organizational learning but will be referred to as the evolutionary framework in this chapter.