Join us for the Presenter Symposium "Cultural Evolution and Organizational Culture" at the 2025 AOM Annual Conference in Copenhagen.
Place and time: Bella Center MR173, Tuesday 29, 8:30 - 10:00
The purpose of this symposium is to i) introduce Cultural Evolution to the OMT, OB and related communities, ii) promote a conversation that allows these fields to learn from one another, particularly in the domain of organizational culture, iii) provide concrete examples on how this cross-influence takes shape by showcasing four presentations.
Cultural Evolution emerged in the 1970s–80s as scholars adapted population genetics to study how culture-defined as socially transmitted information like beliefs, skills, and values-evolves similarly to biological traits. Initially focused on theoretical modelling, the field has become increasingly empirical. It examines how cultural traits spread and persist through social learning and group selection mechanisms, and how many factors influence these processes. The field is increasingly bridging evolutionary theory with several social science disciplines, offering powerful tools to explain cultural diversity and change.
Organizational culture, defined as the shared values and beliefs within organizations, has been extensively studied, yet theoretical progress has stalled. Cultural evolution can help build theoretical scaffolds via two generic pathways, which will be exemplified in the talks. First, cultural evolution provides a broad, encompassing theoretical framework that is capable to accommodate different epistemological approaches in organizational culture, and naturally connecting different levels of analysis-biological, behavioral, and group levels. Second, models from cultural evolution provide micro explanations of how cultural phenomena emerges and evolves. These models focus on bounded rational agents adapting to changes using information transmission and learning, endogenously shaping culture. The resulting generative formal machinery can help provide formal foundations to the study of organizational culture.
Papers and presenters:
Tribal instincts and cultural evolution: Peer codes, hero codes, and ancestor codes update through different social learning heuristics
Michael Morris (Columbia Business School)
Cultural evolution: a guide to formal models for organizational culture
Helena Miton (Stanford Graduate School of Business)
Employee mobility as cultural transmission: A model of cultural management spillovers across organizations
Anjali Bhatt (Harvard Business School)
Overshooting of (Useful) Cultural Practices: A Model of the Runaway Effect
Francisco Brahm (London Business School)
Organizers:
Helena Miton (Stanford GSB) and Francisco Brahm (London Business School)
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Francisco Brahm
London Business School
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