Although it is laudable that evolutionary economists have a greater concern for ontological issues than many of their brethren, considerations concerning ontology cannot play a decisive role in adjudicating theoretical disputes. Attempts to formulate an appropriate ontology for evolutionary economics, different from the one prevailing in standard economic theory, are better viewed as exercises in conjectural revisionary ontology. Ideally they offer useful heuristics for fruitful further theorizing. Furthermore, issues raised in connection with ontology that previously were treated as if they are one and the same are here categorized into three clusters. The categorization is used to dispel worries that have haunted evolutionary economics right from its inception. It is shown in particular that the belief that there are significant Darwinian evolutionary processes going on in present-day capitalist economies does not imply the denial of genuine agency or the endorsement of dubious doctrines such as biological reductionism.Evolutionary economics, ontology, Darwinism, biological reductionism, agency,
Abstract:It is argued that routines can be fruitfully conceived of as multilevel mechanisms. The merits of viewing routines as multilevel mechanisms are that it helps in putting together a coherent picture of what routines are, what routines do, and how they do it. In particular, it helps in getting a clearer picture of how skills and routines are ontologically (rather than metaphorically) related to each other. It allows us to see that while routines aregenerativemechanisms producing recurrent patterns of firm behavior, asmultilevelmechanisms they themselves are at the same time recurrent patterns of interaction within firms. Because of its ‘behavioral’ spirit, viewing routines as multilevel mechanisms (rather than as, for example, unobservable dispositions of firms to energize patterns of behavior in firms) greatly facilitates further empirical research on crucial, as yet unresolved issues, such as how stable and robust routines are and to what extent firm behavior is routine.
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