Evolutionary Theory in the

Administrative Sciences: Introduction

Martin De Jong and Haiko Van der Voort

The term "evolution" is often used in the administrative sciences to designate dy-
namic processes of change in general. In biology, evolution has a very specific mean-
ing, namely the application of a generative variation-selective retention scheme to
change. Applying this to the administrative sciences is more exacting: describing
what the variation consists of, how replication of the generated variation occurs and
delineating the population from which the selection is made are far from easy. While
it is the intention of this special issue as a whole to provide some empirical ex-
amples of evolutionary change in the public and private sectors, this introduction
will lay out the main lines of thought in what is often referred to as universal Dar-
winism and what this means in the administrative sciences. Key concepts here are
generative variation, selective retention, and selective institutional environment.
According to the authors, the Darwinian scheme of evolutionary theory focuses on
how new ideas or concepts arise, how they propagate and influence wider actor
thinking and on how the institutional environment in which they operate affects
their differential survival. This evolutionary process is an interplay between actors
and replicators (sounds, images, and in this context mostly words) in which it can-
not be said in advance which one is fooling the other.

Evolutionary Theory in the Administrative Process

T h e term "evolution" is often used in the administrative sciences to designate

d y n a m i c processes of change in general. In biology, evolution has a very specific
meaning, namely the application o f a generative variation-selective retention scheme
to change. A p p l y i n g this to the administrative sciences is m o r e exacting: describing
what the variation consists of, h o w replication o f the generated variation occurs
and delineating the population f r o m which the selection is m a d e are far f r o m easy.
Population ecologists Hannan and F r e e m a n (1977, 1989) w e r e a m o n g the first to

Martin De Jong is associate professor of public management. He may be reached at

wm.dejong@tbm.tudelft.nl. Haiko Van der Voort is a research associate who lectures and publishes
on a wide range of issues including process management and system innovations.
Knowledge, Technology,&Policy,Winter 2004, Vol. 16, No. 4, pp. 16-29.
De Jong and Van der Voort 17

make models of selection from among organizations in a competitive environment,

but their work did not give a sense of the underlying conceptual and/or adaptive
dynamics. One could see theirs as a model representing the survival of the eco-
nomically fittest organizations. Nelson and Winter (1982) have portrayed economic
change as the replacement of certain organizational routines or standard operating
procedures by others due to evolutionary processes. Their publication struck a sen-
sitive chord among some vanguard economists, which made them important cham-
pions of a strand called evolutionary economics (see Dosi, 1984 for another
groundbreaking work in this area). But one may wonder whether the actual unit of
replication in social interaction is really the routine, or rather something smaller
such as fashionable sounds, images or words, and or ensembles made of them, be
they music, gestalts, or paradigms. Routines would then be composed of combina-
tions of such smaller units. As a consequence, an evolutionary thinker attached to
the "actual" Darwinian scheme would not consider them sufficiently evolutionary.
An interpretative scheme closer to genetic recombination, replication and selection
is required to understand the administrative process in its "core." But does that
work? Can empirical evidence be generated that is more than either "just so sto-
ries" or mathematical representations of fictitious evolutionary algorhythms lead-
ing to abstract outcomes?
It is the intention of this special issue of Knowledge, Technology, & Policy to
provide some empirical examples in which evolutionary change in the administra-
tive sciences, both in public policy and in private sector competition, is interpreted
along Darwinian lines.
According to the authors, the Darwinian scheme of evolutionary theory focuses
on how new ideas or concepts arise, how they spread around and influence wider
actor thinking, and on how the institutional environment in which they operate
affects their differential survival. This is often related to but certainly not identical
with the differential survival of actors or organizations. This evolutionary process
is an interplay between actors (individuals and organizations) and replicators (sounds,
images and words, and systems made of the each of the above or even combina-
tions of those) in which it cannot be said in advance which one is fooling the other.
It may be that actors fool other actors with strategic representation of concepts to
further their interest. It may also be that concepts have a manipulative effect on
actors of which the latter remain fully unaware. We have to keep our eyes open to
both possibilities, perhaps even occurring in combination.
A word of warning is due before further exposing the structure of this chapter.
Evolutionary and Darwinian approaches enjoy increasing popularity in the social
sciences, but still meet with strong resistance in many sections of it, including po-
litical science and public policy. To some extent, this hesitation or even outright
hostility is well deserved. In the past, some analysts of the sociobiological brand
have grossly overstated their case. They have not only underestimated the moral
implications of some of their writings, they have also overlooked the complexities
of the world of social, cultural, and conceptual development and ascribed too many
human patterns of behavior to deeper drives such as the need to procreate or the
urge to physical survival. But on the other hand, many social scientists with atti-
tudes inimical to evolutionary theory either are uninformed of the fact that sociobi-
ology is only one of several ways in which evolutionary theory is used to understand
18 Knowledge, Technology, & Policy / Winter 2004

mechanisms and processes in the social, cultural and conceptual world. Alterna-
tively, they consciously use socio-biology as a p a r s p r o toto scapegoat to attack all
derivatives from the science of biology to protect their own academic turf (Laland
and Brown, 2001). Indeed, a combination of game theory and what is increasingly
referred to as "memetics," the application of evolutionary models of information
transmission to conceptual change and development, should be viewed as a study
of the processes of creative mutation and selective retention of ideas in a multi-
actor setting (Maynard Smith, 1982; Campbell, 1987; Plotkin, 1994; Weibull, 1995;
Brodie, 1995; De Jong, 1999; Frank, 2000). Employed in the administrative con-
text of actor networks that in mutual interaction develop their own worlds of per-
ception, it could therefore be applied fruitfully to most modem constructivist and
narrative interpretations of administration and policymaking, because it is a meta-
framework consisting of underlying mechanisms. At the same time, it remains open
to competitive and/or political warfare between actors striving to further their own
goals in a sort of networked game theoretic setting. It therefore covers both the
conceptual and the competitive aspects of administrative change. But as many con-
clude from previous literature on the subject, it badly needs empirical filling or it
may be weeded out, scientifically speaking (Laland and Brown, 2001; Edmonds,
2003; Dirlam, 2003). This volume is an attempt to present such material for the
world of public and private organizations.
In the contributions following this introduction, the guest editors have therefore
invited several authors to provide empirical examples of evolutionary mechanisms
and processes in the world of organizations that go beyond "just so" stories. To take
the field further, it is vital to take things a step further than anecdotal evidence
coming in handy to prove a point.
But to start with, this introductory article will expound what evolutionary think-
ing applied to the world of administration revolves around, and present the key
concepts and mechanisms in this theoretical framework. In section 2 the first two
key concepts in the universal Darwinian scheme are explained, these being genera-
tive variation and selective retention. Subsequently, section 3 will present another
key concept for the application of evolutionary theory to the administrative sci-
ences, being the institutional environment. Section 4 will show all three key con-
cepts in combination, whereas section 5 relates how the constructivist work of Latour
and Foucault has implicitly used the same line of reasoning as the administrative
Darwinist, without referring to exactly the same concepts. It is conceivable that
these two worlds meet in the near future. At the end of this introductory chapter,
section 6 will give an overview of all the empirical contributions this special issue
has to offer to the reader.

Key Concepts in Evolutionary Theory:

Generative Variation and Selective Retention

Ever since Richard Dawkins (1976) had introduced the selfish "meme" as being
the ideational counterpart of the selfish gene, which always aims at self-replication
and utilizes organic hosts (actor brains) to further this goal, evolutionary theorists
have been exploring whether mechanisms as they exist for the evolution of natural
De Jong and Van der Voort 19

species, also exist in other areas and disciplines, t Are viruses and man's immuno-
logical system also subject to the forces of generative mutation and selective reten-
tion? Do languages evolve across time according to the rules of variation and
selection? Have concepts as they were developed in the science of physics in fact
gone through selection tests that have to do with practical usefulness and address-
ing needs of the wicked world of experimentation rather than in the pursuit of abso-
lute truth, as Stephen Toulmin (1972) already claimed as a memeticist avant la
lettre? Daniel Dennett (1993, 1995) has enlarged the meme to also comprise im-
ages and tunes. Since then a sizeable number of books popularizing memetics has
appeared (Brodie, 1995; Cziko, 1997; Lynch, 1999; Blackmore, 1999; and Aunger,
2001, 2002). In addition, a host of papers has appeared in the on-line Journal of
Memetics--Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission. Those who found
the evolutionary perspective of social, cultural and conceptual processes meaning-
ful and valuable, but found the term "meme" insufficiently clear, ill-defined, diffi-
cult to operationalize or simply too popular to be serious, refer to it as "evolutionary
epistemology." Evolutionary epistemology, or the study of how humans come to
perceive the world following a scheme of variation and selection, originated with
Campbell (1987) and ideas on the generation and selection of hypotheses devel-
oped by Sir Karl Popper (1971, 1992a, 1992b). It is based on insights taken from
psychology, methodologically more thorough, but in practice closely affiliated with
memetic thinking. Hull's work (1988) on the evolution of concepts in dominant
modern day biology is probably the best demonstration of how these two evolu-
tionary strands in reality are intimately related. Hull first describes scientific con-
cepts as arising in the interaction among actors operating in academic networks and
institutionally regulated through key positions in leading conference sessions and
academic journals. He then reinterprets these events as the replication of scientific
ideas (memes or "replicators") through the differential survival and procreation of
the actors that host these ideas (vehicles, interveners, or "interactors"). The evolv-
ing result of this interplay between interaction and replication across time is called
"lineage.'" Actors, their strategies, the sexiness of the concepts they promote, the
networks in which they operate, who occupies which positions, has which prefer-
ences and promotes what institutional interests and the chance factor all influence
conceptual fitness. To conclude, memeticists and evolutionary epistemologists share
a strong belief in universal selection theory or universal Darwinism. Though their
enthusiasm may at times appear somewhat evangelical, empirical evidence in their
favor is piling up (Van den Bergh and Fetchenhauer, 2001 ).
In sum, a Darwinian evolutionary theorist focuses on processes of generative
mutation (the accidental creation of conceptual variation through mutants) and se-
lective retention (choice and storage of a small number of these mutants in the
dominant, institutionalized conceptual framework out of this variation and weed-
ing out of the rest). Actors may, through yet unidentified (blind) creative processes,
generate new concepts and synthesize existing concepts in new ways and then work
them out in papers and maps. These new replicators arise as mutations from exist-
ing concepts and increase the conceptual variation. The more they benefit from
them, the harder they will push for acceptance among other players. They may
even use tricks to get them selected, for instance through attaching them to innocu-
20 Knowledge, Technology, & Policy / Winter 2004

ous projects that have been granted funding anyway (De Jong, 2001). Or through
lobbying with more influential actors or striking a quidpro quo exchange deal with
them. Your meme is my meme and my meme is your meme. In other cases, the
spread of ideas in papers, reports or maps occurs less purposefully. The meme may
have actually captured the brain of the actor and drives it to spread it around out of
sheer enthusiasm. It was sexy, mysterious, timely, morally attractive, deceptively
clear, or sufficiently vague and elusive to appear harmless. One just needs to be
reminded of the meme "market." Certain groups may have deftly pushed for their
adoption and they became acceptable as a result of the immediate action perspec-
tive, which reassured potential opponents. If Darwin were able to retrace the origin
of a concept and systematically map how it moved from brain to brain and from
actor to actor and how it was mixed and associated with other concepts, he could
draw its complete lineage. A phenomenon Darwin was not yet aware of, but which
was developed much later after his theory of natural selection was blended with
insights from modem Mendelian genetics into the New Synthesis, is the so-called
phenotype (Dawkins, 1982). A genotype refers to the genetic material organisms
have, whereas the phenotype is the physical expression it gets. Any beaver has a
particular genetic make-up only part of which is expressed in its physical appear-
ance and conduct towards its selective environment. The relationship between geno-
type and phenotype is not one to one: a large share of the genetic information is
never used and therefore does not get expressed in the phenotype. On the other
hand, genetic information leaves open several courses in the material world, mak-
ing many potential phenotypes possible the development of which depends on the
ecological circumstances.
Dawkins takes the reach of its phenotype even further, however, to the extended
phenotype. Beavers build dams and to achieve this gnaw at tree trunks and trans-
form entire parts of the landscape through their interventions.
Interestingly, concepts or memes have their homes in actors' brains and remain
largely invisible there. At times, however they are expressed in sentences or maps
of the environment connected to and in the context of other memes. They can be
seen as "phemotypes." In fact, it is the phemotypes that analysts will find in papers,
reports, and technical artifacts. If memes become part of the official government
policy or business philosophy, they become extended phemotypes: they institution-
alize or become the dominant institutional framework. Thus, the selective concep-
tual environment is reformed. From then on, actors are obliged to reference the
concept in question before they are allowed to access instruments of power, such as
money and legal competence. The concept has achieved the maximum of what it
could achieve: it was generated as a new mutant, it spread to other actors, was
expressed repeatedly as a phemotype and was finally adopted as an integrated part
of the dominant institutional framework aimed at selecting new memes. Section 3 will
deal with the institutional selective environment and how it impacts on "fitness."

Another Key Concept: The Institutional Environment

Knowledge on organizational change can be increased by describing it as pro-

cess in which a certain variation of concepts is created, after which selection from
De Jong and Van der Voort 21

this variation takes place. This is at least what the authors believe. The selection
takes place in a selective environment, which in the world of biology is known as
the ecological environment. It takes the shape of sufficient forage for the creature
or species in question as well as the threat of predators taking its life. If a being
takes in enough food and it and its next-of-kin dodge those that are after them, they
have a greater chance of delivering many babies, in other words making a strong
and numerous progeny carrying forth their genetic material. In an administrative
environment this is comparable to an actor operating in an institutional environ-
ment in a wider sense. This institutional environment is comprised of other actors,
such as competitors, potential entrants, collaborators, suppliers, buyers, and other
actors that somehow affect the viability and fertility of the concepts the actor under
study produces and spreads. This is much like how a famous economist as Michael
Porter (1980) would also describe the firm in relation to its strategic environment.
All of these actors have the disposal of some instruments of power (funds, compe-
tence in particular area, knowledge, patents, good relations, etc.), just like the actor
under study. Moreover, there are legal and cultural rules of conduct that have an
impact on how these agents interact and what is acceptable and affordable and what
is not. Seen from the perspective of the concept or meme that "wants" to be spread
or that its creator wants to be spread, this institutional environment works as a filter
it will have to pass through before it can have any material consequences. Does the
actor-carrier or "host" of the concept have enough financial resources to promote
its ideas? Does it have partners in its environment ready to collaborate in working
them out? Are others receptive to them or buy the visions or artifacts based on
them? And, in the case of the public sector, will dominant policy actors adopt them
and make them official policy? Or in the case of business, will strong rivals
outcompete them and menace their existence or weaken them?
In sum, the ensemble of ideas brought in by different actors are "filtered" by this
complex called the institutional environment, and only those ideas fitting in with
the dominant complex embraced by the currently most powerful actors acquire
influence on the "real" decision making. It seems that concepts are "fit" when they
"fit in." Though this is true to large extent, it is also highly tautological. If concepts
did not survive, they apparently did not fit in. Fortunately, this is not totally true.
Some concepts do not conform to the institutional standards at first, but do reach
institutional hegemony after fierce conceptual struggle. Other concepts should be
fit considering their possession of the properties demanded by the institutional en-
vironment, and yet don't make it if competition is too strong. 2
The above has shown that institutional structures work as filters that select cer-
tain incoming concepts in and weed others out. But the relationship between con-
cepts and institutions can also be approached from a more dynamic angle: how
previously ignored concepts become institutionalized themselves, succeeding
thereby in changing the till then dominant institutional complex. This does not
happen all that often, however; it requires the momentum of a crisis situation. Big
cbanges only come about when a rigid existing complex is no longer able to pro-
vide satisfactory answers to the wishes of the consumer or the public (Krasner,
1984, 1988). Such situations put the dominant complex under strain and can lead to
institutional evolution via two different paths, which I will describe underneath:
22 Knowledge, Technology, & Policy / Winter 2004

A. The Complete Replacement of the Conceptual Framework

by Another (Paradigm Shift)
In this case, the dominant actor(s) is/are confronted with increased resistance
from recessive actors that no longer accept its/their conceptual and behavioral he-
gemony and challenge the existing institutional setting as a whole. Following the
increased behavioral strength of the recessive actors, a fierce conceptual struggle
begins in which the dominant actor(s) also loses the conceptual initiative and fi-
nally has to give way. In the case of the public sector, this may lead to a complete
overhaul of the current policy. For private business, it means a totally new product
line that eclipses the position of the old line.

B. A Partial Change in the Conceptual Framework (Slight Mutation)

In this less revolutionary case, dominant actors anticipate the weakening of their
behavioral position and prevent it by allowing recessive actors to have some more
influence by accepting a few of their recessive concepts. They integrate them into
the dominant institutional structure to placate the recessive actors without having
to give up the dominant paradigm. In this case, dominant actors are more forward-
looking and do not have to go through the painful process of giving up funds, politi-
cal positions, or legal competences. They only have to consent to some conceptual
adaptations in the institutional complex to accommodate and placate dissident ac-
tors. In public policy, this implies something like a merger of two previously com-
peting views of solving the policy problem. In the private sector, the new product,
service, or good would acquire characteristics of the new product line, but remain
compatible with the formerly dominant product; this may mean that eventually the
two competing suppliers of this good will participate in a joint venture, for in-
stance. It could also imply that they remain fierce competitors, but that their prod-
ucts just come to resemble each other. After all, it is the conceptual harmonization
that matters to evolutionary change, not what occurs to the actors who happen to be
carriers of this information.
Considering the exchange of concepts waging a struggle for survival in institu-
tional complexes gives us some valuable insights in the dynamics of decision-mak-
ing. But there is a philosophical problem here. Do concepts, mere words or images
that is, actually struggle? Aren't concepts only puppets on strains, used as manipu-
lative tools by humans or actors to serve their interests? They do not have a will of
their own, do they?
In biology, there is an equivalent discussion concerning the "levels of selection"
(Brandon, 1988; Plotldn, 1994). Leading theorists in evolutionary theory do not
agree among themselves about these levels of selection. Some say that selfish genes
really fight for their own subsistence and that they are the ones that live through
generations. In that case individual organisms are no more than helpless vehicles
that replicate invisible information codes vital to evolution (Dawkins, 1976). In the
social science analogy, this would imply that actors are only the means through
which concepts are transferred and that real selection is "executed" only on con-
cepts. Others claim that organisms are the ones that matter when it comes to the
weeding out process, not genes. As a result, the transplantation of genetic material
De Jong and Van der Voort 23

depends on the survival and reproduction of their carriers. Organisms are not simple
vehicles, but acting and interacting entities that during their lives "determine"
whether the genes according to which codes they are built deserve a future (Sober,
1984). For the process of conceptual evolution, this would mean that the success of
actor fitness and behavior make a difference. They are active carriers of ideas, not
passive vehicles, so in the end the survival of ideas depends on them. Then, a "com-
petitive strategy" for successful businesses or public organizations certainly mat-
ters. The last group of theorists focuses on whole populations of organisms.
Considering a much larger time span and the success of species, subspecies or geo-
graphically dispersed groups within a species, these theorists generally conclude
that populations that are bigger or have a greater variation in their total "geneplex"
are also fitter in the long run. Besides, individual organisms may have a strong
physical constitution but may lack the advantages of a protective social group (Bran-
don, 1988). 3
As all lines of thought have a point, the decision on what the level of selection is
cannot be definitively answered. Hull (1988) found a way out of this dilemma by
introducing the difference between interactors and replicators that operate at all
levels of selection. He defines them as follows:

replicator: an entity that passes on its structure largely intact in successive replications.

interactor: an entity that interacts as a cohesive whole with its environment in such a way
that this interaction causes replication to be differential.

With the aid of these terms selection can be characterized succinctly as follows:

selection: a process in which the differential extinction and proliferation of interactors

cause the differential perpetuation of the relevant replicators.

Replicators and interactors are the entities that function in selection processes. Some
general term is also needed for the entities that result from successive replications (Hull
1988: 408--409).

Generative Variation and Selective Retention

in the Institutional Environment

Now jumping back to the world of concepts and actors, we can see that actors
interact with their environment causing concepts and conceptual systems to be rep-
licated differentially. Concepts only tied to "unfit," i.e. politically weak, actors are
also unfit and have a greater chance of being weeded out. For concepts used by fit
actors the opposite goes: they are often selected in. The differential success of ac-
tors in spreading their concepts produces an outcome known as conceptual evolu-
tion. According to Hull's definition, (inter)actors operate in an environment that
causes (conceptual) replication to be differential. In the case of biological evolution
it is the natural environment or ecology that causes the replication of genetic infor-
24 Knowledge, Technology, & Policy I Winter 2004

mation to be differential. When speaking of conceptual evolution, it is the institu-

tional environment that makes the procreation of some concepts more successful
than the spreading of others. If again, we make a distinction between the creation of
a variation of concepts (A) and their selection process (B), we acquire a full picture
of the mechanisms behind conceptual evolution.

A. The Creation of a Variation of Concepts

In the first place, actors must produce and utilize concepts before they are taken
to their selective arena or filter. Concepts spread through replication from one actor
to another. When concepts are replicated, small mutations or recombinations take
place once in a while: their meaning changes, they acquire an extra connotation or
they are applied to a different domain than previously. In other cases, whole new
words are coined or invented. Conceptual mutation creates a greater variation of
ideas to arise. In itself the replication of a concept from one actor to another only
generates conceptual change in the "brain" of the receiving actor. But it may also
provoke changes in this actor's perceptions and preferences and lead to different
judgments of policies. This latter phenomenon leads them to act differently, carry-
ing the germ of behavioral change shown in phemotypes and extended phemotypes.

B. The Selection of Concepts

The institutional environment reflects the dominant behavioral and conceptual
practices developed from the past unto now and serves as a filter to the new incom-
ing variation of concepts brought forward by actors. The behavioral institutions
structure who is/are allowed to come in and perform what function with what means,
the conceptual institutions are a conceptual system structuring what concepts and
arguments are deemed meaningful by dominant actors. It contains the criteria ap-
plied to the selection of newly introduced concepts at a particular moment, but this
too may evolve. If a specific concept has been replicated sufficiently to affect the
wishes of dominant actors within the selective arena, it may institutionalize and
become part of this filter. 4
If the existence of institutional structures can be established fairly easily by de-
scribing a system's written and oral rules of decision making, circumscribing what
exactly makes for the fitness of a concept is less self-evident. In the preceding
sections, we saw that concepts in conformity with the criteria in the dominant com-
plex are rather more successful than dissident ideas. But fitness is a stochastic and
plural quality. It is stochastic in the sense that potentially viable concepts can fail to
spread for other reasons. They may enter the selection arena when other even stron-
ger concepts happen to arrive as well or the actor presenting them may be out of
grace. Fitness is plural or multiple in the sense that it has many sides to it. It is
related to conceptual criteria as the ones just mentioned, but it is also related to
behavioral criteria such as consulting friendly representatives from dominant ac-
tors for some good advice or aBying with friend actors to reinforce one's position.
However, generally it is the concept's usefulness in the eyes of actors that makes it
viable.
De Jong and Van der Voort 25

In sum, fitness may be the resultant of inherent attractiveness (see Heylighen

1997, for an overview on which aspects may contribute to this attraction), competi-
tive strategy and chance. Hull (1988) spoke of conceptual inclusive fitness: con-
cepts are mainly replicated because of their ability to make individual actors
understand and solve problems. In that sense they should be (1) applicable to a
wide range of phenomena and (2) provide deep insight in these problems. Also,
when concepts have a structuring effect on other concepts, they will obtain a vital
role in the web of a conceptual system or paradigm and attract or catch many other
concepts in their webs. Concepts like "the market," "flexibility," or "paradigm"
seem to have these characteristics. If a sufficiently large number of powerful actors
share the opinion that a concept is needed or useful, one can say that it has been
proven "fit." This situation occurs in the two types of situations mentioned in the
preceding section: namely (1) when a concept has already been institutionalized, or
(2) when the current institutional structure is threatened or in crisis and actors rec-
ognize that the till then recessively lingering concept fills the problem-solving gap
all concepts in the old complex were unable to fill.
As we saw above, in some cases dependent actors have to adapt to the concepts
imposed by more dominant ones. And in other cases, a whole group of not even all
that strong actors may once in a while succeed in forcing dominant ones to retreat
and by and by push in a wholly new conceptual system, realizing a "paradigm
shift" so to say.

Evolutionary Theory and Constructivist Thinking

For many researchers and practitioners in the administrative sciences who have
abandoned the rational view of policy analysis and policymaking and have adopted
the more messy and constructivist approaches to knowledge acquisition and spread
and/or the networked approach to interaction and decision-making, all the above
must ring a bell. Of course, this is how things work! None of these people have ever
seriously believed in the existence of coherent and neatly organized conceptual
systems with clearly identifiable assumptions, but they have always chosen to look
at interaction processes between actors, the incentives coming from their social and
physical environment and the ways they gave meaning to their observations and
interpretations. Real-life work-processes, academic rhetoric, power structures and
lopsidedness of human perception have always dominated in their writings. Latour
(1987, 1997) preferred to conduct an anthropological study of how a group of highly
reputed scientists did their work in a neurocrinological laboratory. He concluded
that not the observation of the world or real life experiments made for scientifically
valuable knowledge, but the structuring and restructuring of texts in computer prints,
pre-prints, books, articles, graphs, tables, and reports. Facts were made by placing
data and trends in a new context and by referring to concepts used by other authors.
Foucault (1988, 1990, 1995) has devoted his work to giving historical accounts of
the socio-political interpretation of how madness, crime, and sexuality evolved,
who introduced and imposed labels for these phenomena and had them institution-
alized in wider social practices and who benefited and suffered from these develop-
ments. He gives ample demonstration of the institutionalisation of concepts, showing
26 Knowledge, Technology, & Policy / Winter 2004

that in some sense what Toulmin (1972) had already claimed before, namely that
institutions are macro-concepts and that concepts are micro-institutions. What makes
both of these philosophical authors particularly attractive to contemporary theo-
rists of social science is the way they combine the two sides of the political selec-
tion process distinguished above. They show great awareness of the evolution of
cognitive processes, but they also reckon with the wider institutional environment
in which these processes occur. In other words, they have a keen eye for the inter-
play between conceptual labelling and institutional environment. Institutional en-
vironments, composed of both actors steering with various policy instruments and
a dominant conceptual framework, are tolerant of certain incoming concepts, but
not others. On the other hand, new concepts, if adopted, and new actors, if entering
the arena, may gradually or through shocks, alter the institutional environment and
constitute the filter for future selections. Many modern analysts are likely to see the
relevance of universal Darwinism to their own field. Rhetoric revolves around sexy
concepts or the sexy presentation of less sexy concepts to increase their chances of
being selected in. The institutionalist perspective focuses on which conceptual
schemes have been selected to become dominant government policy and how they
have been connected to the instruments of power to safeguard that the perspective
underlying them will physically materialize. Fit concepts are those words or im-
ages that are replicated in debates or discussions because they somehow fulfill a
need (or interest) for those who use them. Those who use them have institutional
positions to regulate or fund projects favor those political actors who frame their
proposal in the terminology that the regulator(s) or funder(s) wish. Quite often
manipulative practices, such as camouflage, mimicry, or other forms of strategic
behavior are engaged in to increase the chances of being selected (De Jong, 2001).
As a result, concepts that serve the interests of institutionally dominant actors have
a much higher chance of being replicated (and perhaps at some future moment
being physically realized) than those expressed by weaker actors. In that sense, fit
concepts are concepts favored by fit actors in the institutional structure, coinciden-
tal events taken apart. But there is more. Institutional structures and political posi-
tions taken by actors in it are not static and unchanging entities. In some cases they
may feel inclined to adopt mutated concepts that reinforce their position even more
or adopt them because they fear their position has come under attack and they will
have to adapt to conceptual innovations presented by other upcoming actors. In
other, more antagonistic circumstances claims from recessive actors remain
unaccommodated by actors dominant in the institutional structure. Then, these her-
etics may cooperate to develop a complex of concepts radically different from those
officially embraced. And then, if societal tides are turning, a struggle between two
perspectives might arise after which the new one takes over or some form of syn-
thesis evolves consisting of concepts coming from both perspectives. The interplay
of power relationships and conceptual development is always the crux of the analy-
sis, but this combination is a hard one, analytically and empirically.

A Preview to This Volume

The evolutionary perspective may be helpful in understanding the way concep-

tual bias is mobilized, but framing decision-making in terms of conceptual fitness
De Jong and Van der Voort 27

does not help us to automatically forecast the success of invented ideas. That would
have been too beautiful anyway. What we can do, however, is to become prescrip-
tive on (1) how actors can increase the chances of success for their conceptual
babies and (2) how to structure interaction, so that given desired impacts are gener-
ated, such as selection from among a wide variety of mutants. 5 The articles 2, 3,
and 4 will, however, remain largely descriptive.
Article 2, on open source software development, is written by van Wendel de
Joode. Open source communities are a popular but ill-understood research object.
The unit of analysis in the article is source code, which is the human readable part
of software. The source code is viewed as a concept and doing so allows the author
to demonstrate that high levels of variation in open source communities arise and
that selection is emergent and based on the presence of three attractors.
Article 3, written by Van der Voort and De Jong, shows very similar mechanisms
in the rise of the biotechnology industry. In an industry where only very few can tell
the wheat from the chaff, enormous gains as well as enormous losses are conceiv-
able for any potential investor, while academics starting a new life as entrepreneurs
set up spin-off companies and do anything to create an environment around them to
make their biotechnological idea a medical reality.
Article 4, by Dicke, focuses on a case in the public sector: saving the Floridian
Everglades. She describes how representatives from different organizations in the
area (federal government, state government, farmers, Indians) and academics with
different backgrounds (engineers, biologists, ecologists and hydrologists) basically
had to merge their conceptual frameworks into something new that was comprised
of elements derived from all of the previous ones. This new "paradigm" or
"memeplex" proved to be right soil for more new funding to save the area.
Contributions 5 and 6 have more of a prescriptive ambition. The first of the two
on parallel processing, written by Ellerman, compares phenomena in biology with
those on economic innovation and concludes that in both parallel processing pro-
duces more variety of options than keeping the whole genepool or memepool to-
gether. As such, parallel processing is superior to series processing when it comes
to innovation. Article 6 by de Bruijn and ten Heuvelhof shows a very similar line of
thought, but focuses on process management in the public sector in the midst of a
complex and dynamic field of actors that negotiate on solving societal problems.
Their learning is at the same time their shift in preferences, thereby making the
reaching of an agreement a possibility. One could see article 5 as the prescriptive
antipode to contributions 2 and 3, while the precepts that can be taken from article
6 seem to fit very well for issues such as the ones in article 4.
Before the reader can begin to read the empirical contributions, a final remark is
due on what exactly is used by "concepts" in volume. It is taken in a wider sense to
cover ideas, set of ideas and sometimes even products based on them. This essen-
tially means that source codes, biotechnological solutions to medical problems and
policy paradigms are all seen as concepts to which the same evolutionary mecha-
nisms apply. Ideally, one would have to study individual words, sounds or images,
but isolation of those is rarely possible in the world of administration.
We wish the audience of this volume an inspiring read and look forward to con-
structive and challenging reactions.
28 Knowledge, Technology, & Policy / Winter 2004

Notes

1. This made Richard Dawkins himself the father of modern day memetics, standing at the very
beginning of its lineage, like Dennett is their current patron, since he is still actively involved in
writing on the subject now.
2. S•ber ( • 984 ) dedicates a fu•• chapter •f his b••k t• the phi••s•phica• meaning •f •tness. •f being
fit means remaining alive after the natural selection, then those who survived turned out to be fit.
Such a definition denies the possibility to explain or predict fitness before the selection, leaving
it no independent meaning. To be fit is to survive. However, if fitness is defined in terms of
physical strength (for living beings) or semantic aptness (for words) increasing the probability of
survival, it is no longer tautological. One can have a constitution well-adapted to the environ-
ment and still die, one can be a weak exemplar and yet happen to survive. To be fitter is only
having a bigger probability to survive.
3. Theoretically speaking, we could even discern a fourth line of thought (related to the first) claim-
ing that selection happens on populations of genes or populations of concepts (conceptual sys-
tems or paradigms). Some genes are more equal than others in the sense that they prestructure
the operations of other genes. Equally we could say that some concepts within conceptual sys-
tems occupy more central places than others, because they determine the functioning these oth-
ers have within the system. But whether natural or institutional selection occurs on genes/concepts
as such or on geneplexes/conceptual systems was impossible to decide even for the gifted phi-
losophers Toulmin (1972) and Hull (I 973).
4. Institutional evolution takes more time than conceptual evolution. Mutants have to be spread and
incorporated into "'brains" and then be translated to new standard and decision rules. New think-
ing must be transformed into new acting, which puts the power relations in existing interactive
institutions at stake: innovators will always find resistance.
5. "Variation" and "variety" as words are not always so neatly distinguished from one another.
Darwin, in fact, uses both. In his terminology, which we follow here, variation refers to having a
wide spread in the appearance and characteristics of the individuals within a species, whereas a
"variety" refers to a mutated type of the original species.

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