Keyword

Theory of evolution, organisation management, global environment, biological perspectives

Abstract

Evolution is the change in characteristics as exhibited by organisms in a population and natural selection is the mechanism by which evolution occurs. Evolution is not unique to biology, it can be found in other system too (Mende and Kennedy, 1999). However, all these systems are evolving through the same mechanism as in biology: variation, inheritance and selection. A company or an organization can be treated as a living system, using evolutionary theories to understand and perhaps influence how the organization changes over time. The global environment is relatively turbulent and it is important that business needs to evolve, learn and innovate to survive. Organizations that do not change are victims of the natural selection in the market place. This paper sets out to examine the potential contribution of the evolutionary approaches to organisational strategy and how strategic dynamism can be addressed. In order to place the discussion in right perspective the authors have adopted a simple scientific working definition of evolution. The main focus of the paper is on both the biologist and geologist outlooks of evolution. While the biologist view of evolution dwells on genetic competition, the geological view presents evolution as a historical phenomenon. The main assumption here is that some metaphors of evolution have a lot of implications for organizational strategy and for generating corporate strategy to get sustainable competitive advantages


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