IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/joevec/v14y2004i3p281-307.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The firm as an interactor: firms as vehicles for habits and routines

Author

Listed:
  • Geoffrey Hodgson
  • Thorbjørn Knudsen

Abstract

This paper pursues a research agenda inspired by Richard Nelson and Sidney Winter’s Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change (1982). This seminal work applied the Darwinian concepts of variation, replication and selection to the evolution of firms. It proposed a level of evolution, replication and selection at a level higher than individuals or genes, involving the replication and selection of routines and institutions. Significantly, the applicability or otherwise of these Darwinian concepts depends on precise definitions of terms such as replication and selection. The present essay builds on previous work where the concepts of replication (Godfrey-Smith, 2000; Aunger, 2002; Hodgson, 2003b) and selection (Price, 1995; Frank, 1998; Knudsen, 2002b, 2003) have been refined. We deploy the key concepts of ‘replicator’ and ‘interactor’ from the modern philosophy of biology (Hull, 1981, 1988). It is shown that while habits and routines can be regarded as replicators, there is a case for regarding firms and similarly cohesive organizations as interactors. We explore some of the implications of this result and provide an important component in the construction of a multiple-level evolutionary theory, involving replicating units at several socio-economic levels. Copyright Springer-Verlag Berlin/Heidelberg 2004

Suggested Citation

  • Geoffrey Hodgson & Thorbjørn Knudsen, 2004. "The firm as an interactor: firms as vehicles for habits and routines," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 14(3), pages 281-307, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:joevec:v:14:y:2004:i:3:p:281-307
    DOI: 10.1007/s00191-004-0192-1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s00191-004-0192-1
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s00191-004-0192-1?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:joevec:v:14:y:2004:i:3:p:281-307. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.