The Emergence of Organizations and Markets: Theory Overview

1. The Emergence of Organizations and Markets:Theory Overview John F. Padgett conference on book at Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies June 30, 2015

2. Goals of book To rethink from social science perspective: • Novelty especially organizational novelty (a.k.a. “emergence of actors”) • Evolution not of genes or pseudo genes (“memes”) but of networks P.S. Evo-devo is parallel move in biology to make evolution more “networky”

3. Two core theoretical concepts • Autocatalysis (from Walter Fontana at Santa Fe Institute) • Multiple Networks (from Harrison White at Harvard Sociology)

4. My own objectives for workshop • How to develop further the organizational novelty/network evolution research agenda? -- potential follow-up venue: new SSRC working group on History and Evolution • How to fill in remaining theoretical gaps between autocatalysis and multiple networks? • More empirical applications?

5. Autocatalysis • Constructivist networks of transformation/action -- not the usual “networks as pipes” of mere transmission • That reproduce themselves through time, via cycles in topology -- metaphors of body and nose

6. Autocatalysis (cont.) • Eigen and Schuster originally applied autocatalysis to chemical origins of life, • but we add that their chemical definition of “Life” also applies to • Economy where products are produced and transformed • Social networks where people are produced and transformed • Language where symbols are produced and transformed

7. Three types of Autocatalysis • Production autocatalysis -- products produced; skills reproduced -- appears in book mostly as models • Biographical autocatalysis -- skills produced; relational protocols reprod. -- appears in book mostly as cases • Linguistic autocatalysis -- conversations produced; symbols reprod. -- appears in book mostly as promissory note

8. Multiple Networks • Autocatalysis is self-organization/emergence: in effect, network version of “selection” -- in biologists’ sense of relative reproduction -- not economists’ sense of relative efficiency • That alone not evolution, because no generation of variation/novelty • Our theory (really our cases) argue that org. novelty comes from transpositions and recombinations of multiple social networks

10. Multiple Networks (cont.) • Nice finding in chapter 3 modeling was endogenous emergence of multiple networks -- Durkheim’s “differentiation of domains” -- first model (I know) to do so • Each domain is autocatalytic, but multiple domains function to regulate and to catalyze each other, through shared parts/people -- “regulate” means negative feedback between domains, to smooth perturbations -- “tipping” or “spillover” means positive feedback between domains, to induce new autocatalytic cycles

11. Innovation versus Invention • Innovation is vertical movement in figure 1 -- through multi-functional nodes and short chains -- social embeddedness“topology of possible” -- innovation per se quite common, but mostly eliminated by autocatalytic reproduction • Invention is horizontal spillover in figure 1 -- not like new product but like new industry • “Revolution” is cascade into more than one domain -- like formation of new multi-functional elite • [Woody will say more]

12. Outstanding issues/Next steps • No time for me to discuss, but I sent around: (1) Resilience/structural vulnerability (2) Syncretism (3) Modularity (4) Micro mechanisms of network recombination (5) Biography