The Stanley Reiter Lecture 2005

On January 26, 2005 I delivered the Stanley Reiter Award Lecture. The Reiter award is named for Stanley Reiter, Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professor of Managerial Economics and Decision Sciences at Kellogg. It is presented to a Kellogg faculty member whose paper is judged by a panel of Kellogg professors across disciplines to be the best paper written in the preceding four calendar years. I received the award for my book Knowledge and Competitive Advantage: The Coevolution of Firms, Technology and National Institutions. You can also read the text of the lecture by clicking on "More" button or by downloading it as a Word file. Alternatively, you can watch a video (58 minutes) of the lecture with Real Player here: Lecture Video. If you watch the video, you should download the Slides that I presented during the lecture but which are not visible in the video.

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Posted on Mar 31, 05 | Category: Lectures -

The Power of Richness: The Why, When, Where and How of Qualitative Research Methods

Participate in the workshop on Qualitative Methods the Academy of Management in Hawaii, Friday afternoon from 1:00 to 4:00, August 5, 2005. The Panelists are: Robert Burgelman, Diana Day, Deborah Dougherty, Charles Galunic, Johann Peter Murmann, Gabriel Szulanski, and Klaus Weber.

Visit the Discussion Forum for the Event where much additional information will be posted.

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Posted on Jan 16, 05 | Category: Conferences - Methodology -

Social Mechanisms: An Analytical Approach to Social Theory

I am a big fan of explanations of social phenomena that set forth the precise causal mechanisms that produce them. This book edited by Peter Hedstroem and Richard Swedberg provides a very good introduction to the approach. You can download the overview chapter here: Social-mechanism.pdf Click on "More..." for a Table of Contents.

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Posted on Jan 07, 05 | Category: Bookshelf -

Review of Jared Diamond’s New Book “Collapse”

The author of Guns, Germs, and Steel considers why some societies collapse when faced with environmental or political catastrophe, while others soldier on. Malcom Galdwell has published a useful review of the book in the New Yorker .

Posted on Jan 04, 05 | Category: Economics -

Personality Plus: Employers love personality tests. But what do they really reveal?

A hefty percentage of American corporations use personality tests as part of the hiring and promotion process. The tests figure in custody battles and in sentencing and parole decisions. "Yet despite their prevalence-and the importance of the matters they are called upon to decide-personality tests have received surprisingly little scrutiny," Paul writes. We can call in the psychologists. We can give [people] a battery of tests. But will any of it help? Read more of Malcom Gladwell's revealing New Yorker Article.

Posted on Nov 20, 04 | Category: Psychology -

The Construction of Social Reality

John Searle's book is a must-read for every social scientist. Searle makes the important distinction between observer independent facts (the sun exists independently of any human being observing it) and oberserver dependent facts (money does not exist unless people agree that a sheet of paper is worth a particular amount). This distinction, in my view, lies at the core of what makes natural sciences different from the social sciences.

Posted on Nov 17, 04 | Category: Bookshelf -

Adaptation vs. Selection in Industry Change: Toward a Contingency View

Important Workshop at AOM '04: Participate in the workshop on Adaptation vs. Selection in Industry Change organized by Jan Rivkin and myself. Panelists are: Bill Barnett, Clayton Christensen, Anita McGahan and Will Mitchell.

Details on the Workshop

Posted on Jun 18, 04 | Category: Conferences -

Economist Paul Romer on Innovation, Instutitions and Economics growth

Paul Romer gave an interesting interview in Reason Magazine describing in non-technical terms on how ecnomic growth comes about.

Posted on May 16, 04 | Category:

Evolutionary Economics—The State of the Science

This is a talk I gave at a conference New Perspectives on Telecommunications and Pharmaceuticals in Europe and the United States: Conference on Evolutionary Economics: Conference Program

Good morning. Let me give you a quick road map of my presentation. First, I will discuss where we are in terms of evolutionary economics, beginning with Nelson and Winter, 1982, the key book in this literature. Then I’ll provide a quick review of the ideas behind evolutionary accounts, laying out the requirements for a valid evolutionary explanation. I’ll follow this with a discussion of recent trends in the literature over the last six or seven years, addressing what I believe to be some of the key outstanding issues that should be addressed by the evolutionary perspective. Finally, time-permitting I’ll speculate a little bit about how one can make economics more an evolutionary science, and about what can be done to make evolutionary ideas more accepted.

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Posted on Mar 30, 01 | Category: Lectures - Economics -