From Friedman to Darwin: An Evolving Paradigm for Economics, Business, and Management

This seminar invites an international audience to join a group of PhD students and faculty at Tecnologico de Monterrey’s (Tec) EGADE Business School for an exploration of paradigm change in economics, business, and management. In contrast to the current dominant paradigm, exemplified by Milton Friedman’s profit maximization model, the new paradigm is based on evolutionary science; hence our title “From Friedman to Darwin.”

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The seminar will be led by Raj Sisodia, co-founder of the Conscious Capitalism Movement and co-chairman of Tec’s Conscious Enterprise Center, and David Sloan Wilson, president of ProSocial World and leading proponent of the new paradigm. Raj and David have been working together for several years and are excited to share their collaboration with an international audience, in addition to students and faculty at Tec. 

Go here for an episode of the Conscious Capitalism podcast titled “The Scientific Foundation for Conscious Capitalism”, which provides a preview of what will be covered in more detail in the seminar. 

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Enrolling in the seminar is free but requires a commitment to attend the sessions and review material in preparation.  The sessions will be conversational and interactive, with ample time for discussion among the participants. Coming to the sessions prepared is essential to get the most out of the conversation. We anticipate that there will be valuable networking opportunities in addition to the learning experience.

We encourage individuals to invite their associates to enroll in the seminar so that they can discuss the material as a small group, in addition to taking part of the larger discussions. Any cooperative endeavor can benefit from learning the material that will be presented. 

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Overview of the Series

This graduate-level seminar will introduce students and faculty to an evolving paradigm for economics, business, and management. In contrast to the current dominant paradigm, exemplified by Milton Friedman’s profit maximization model, the new paradigm is based on evolutionary science; hence our title “From Friedman to Darwin.” 

The evolutionary paradigm is new because the study of evolution has only recently expanded beyond genetic evolution to include other evolutionary processes, such as human cultural evolution and computer evolutionary algorithms (AI). Suddenly, a theory that has already made sense of the biological world can begin to make sense of our socially constructed world, including economic systems that are embedded within political, social, and environmental systems. 

The new paradigm identifies two common denominators needed by businesses and all other organizations to function well as collective units: to be well-governed and to be adaptable to change. Each of these requires certain core design principles that are easy to understand and implement but obscured by the current paradigm. 

In addition to teaching the core design principles, the course will feature examples of businesses and other organizations that have implemented the principles and perform very well as a result. The PhD students taking the course will  develop “evolutionary case reports” of participating business organizations, which will be featured in the final session. 

Course Objectives

1. To learn about a new paradigm relevant to businesses and all other organizations. 
2. To compare the new paradigm with the currently dominant paradigm.
3. To compare the new paradigm with other schools of thought that constitute a form of “diffuse pluralism.” 
4. To translate the conceptual framework into pragmatic knowledge for helping organizations become better governed and more adaptable as forces for good. 

Competences to be Developed

1. Learn and apply core design principles for the governance of organizations. 
2. Learn and apply core design principles for adapting to change in the directions of valued goals. 
3. Learn and apply how to construct multi-organization market economies.  
4. Learn how to research and write evolutionary case reports that provide a single rubric for understanding all organizations. 
5. Develop working relationships with businesses 

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Schedule: (Readings and podcasts forthcoming)

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Feb 10: A Tale of Two Paradigms. This session will provide broad philosophical and historical background to the nature of paradigms, the origin of the neoclassical paradigm that currently dominates the business and management professions, and the emergence of a new paradigm based on Darwin’s theory of evolution.

Feb 17: Core Design Principles for Governance and Adaptability. This session will introduce the two common denominators that all organizations need to function as collective units: To be well-governed and to be adaptable to change. Each requires a set of core design principles that are easy to understand once viewed through the lens of the new paradigm.

Feb 24: Evidence for the New Paradigm—and Against the Old One. Paradigms, by their nature, organize the perception and processing of information, highlighting some possibilities but making us blind to others. Once the core design principles for governance and adaptability are identified, the evidence for them is all around us. So is evidence for the toxic effects of the old paradigm.

March 3: Prosocial Leadership. Leadership is an excellent topic for comparing the two paradigms. The old paradigm encourages a form of leadership that violates the core principles and is incapable of making wise decisions in a complex world. The new paradigm encourages a form of leadership that coordinates group processes and brings out the leader in every member of the organization.

March 10: Prosocial Market Economies. The new paradigm is not anti-competition or anti-market. On the contrary, it encourages competition that is refereed to produce prosocial outcomes, like a sports league. Whereas the old paradigm results in huge wealth and welfare disparities as negative externalities, the new paradigm is inherently equitable and participatory.

March 17: Presentation and Analysis of Evolutionary Case Reports. The final session will feature the evolutionary case reports of the PhD students taking the seminar. Because the students will follow a common rubric for researching and writing their case reports, their results can be collectively analyzed to document the relevance of the core design principles for businesses that are associated with the EGADE business school.

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