یک روش طبیعی برای نظریه در مورد شرکت: نقش همکاری و تکامل فرهنگی

One reason why firms exist, this paper argues, is because they are suitable organizations within which cooperative production systems based on human social predispositions can evolve. In addition, we show how an entrepreneur, given these predispositions, can shape human behavior within a firm. To illustrate these processes, we will present a model that depicts how the biased transmission of cultural contents via social learning processes within the firm influence employees’ behavior and the performance of the firm. These biases can be traced back to evolved social predispositions. Humans lived in tribal scale social systems based on significant amounts of intra- and even intergroup cooperation for tens if not a few hundred thousand years before the first complex societies arose. Firms rest upon the social psychology originally evolved for tribal life. We also relate our conclusions to empirical evidence on the performance and size of different kinds of organizations. Modern organizations have functions rather different from ancient tribes, leading to friction between our social predispositions and organization goals. Firms that manage to reduce this friction will tend to function better.

Many people exhibit loyalties to organizations that appear disproportionate to the material rewards they receive from these organizations. Employees often make decisions in terms of their expected effects on the firm's profitability and identify with organization goals without considering their own economic self-interest. In most firms and organizations, employees cooperatively contribute much more to their organization's or firm's overall goal achievement than the minimum that could be extracted from them by supervisory enforcement of the not-fully specifiable terms of the employment contract.1 So, why are they often motivated to work vigorously for the organization's welfare? Every organization faces the problem of the commons: benefits that are jointly gained and shared by all, among non-contributors and contributors, and the resulting temptation of free-riding (Simon, 1991). Why is there anything besides free-riding, and why do employees identify with organizational goals at all? Do organizations depend entirely on motivating agents through their selfish interests in order to operate successfully? Connected to these puzzles, why is the organizational form of the multi-person firm preferred to ordinary market transactions?

Evidence from evolutionary and cognitive science suggests that humans have an evolved psychology that shapes what we learn, perceive, and think (Richerson and Boyd, 2005, p. 4). These cognitive dispositions influence the kinds of cultural variants that spread and persist. What is more, these findings can render assumptions on organizational behavior more concrete, substantiate them, and contribute to a theory of organizations. This paper has shown that humans have predispositions toward cooperation and group-beneficial behaviors that have resulted from a process of gene-culture coevolution (Boyd and Richerson, 1982). A firm is a suitable organizational form in which a cooperative regime based on these social predispositions can be established. Moreover, a model of cultural transmission has been proposed that can be considered as a step toward an applied science of cultural evolution in an organizational context. The approach can be generalized to indicate conditions under which a cooperative regime can be maintained in organizations in the course of an evolutionary process. Moreover, it can serve to identify the critical periods of firm development.