Toward a Phylogenetic Reconstruction of Organizational Life |
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Authors: | Email author" target="_blank">Ian?Paul?McCarthyEmail author |
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Institution: | (1) SFU Business, Simon Fraser University, 515 West Hastings Street, Vancouver, BC, V6B 5K3, Canada |
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Abstract: | Synopsis Classification is an important activity that facilitates theory development in many academic disciplines. Scholars in fields
such as organizational science, management science and economics and have long recognized that classification offers an approach
for ordering and understanding the diversity of organizational taxa (groups of one or more similar organizational entities).
However, even the most prominent organizational classifications have limited utility, as they tend to be shaped by a specific
research bias, inadequate units of analysis and a standard neoclassical economic view that does not naturally accommodate
the disequilibrium dynamics of modern competition. The result is a relatively large number of individual and unconnected organizational
classifications, which tend to ignore the processes of change responsible for organizational diversity. Collectively they
fail to provide any sort of universal system for ordering, compiling and presenting knowledge on organizational diversity.
This paper has two purposes. First, it reviews the general status of the major theoretical approaches to biological and organizational
classification and compares the methods and resulting classifications derived from each approach. Definitions of key terms
and a discussion on the three principal schools of biological classification (evolutionary systematics, phenetics and cladistics)
are included in this review. Second, this paper aims to encourage critical thinking and debate about the use of the cladistic
classification approach for inferring and representing the historical relationships underpinning organizational diversity.
This involves examining the feasibility of applying the logic of common ancestry to populations of organizations. Consequently,
this paper is exploratory and preparatory in style, with illustrations and assertions concerning the study and classification
of organizational diversity. |
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Keywords: | cladistics classification configurations diversity evolution organizations phylogeny taxonomy typology |
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