Cultural Group Selection in Organization Studies Joel A. C. Baum Professor March proposes that ‘the observed distribution of scholarly commit- ments [within organization studies] over time and over geographic and linguis- tic regions is generated by the interaction of invasion, reproduction, migration and transformation [of ideas, frameworks and worldviews]’ (March 2007: 00). Within this broad evolutionary framework, he emphasizes the ways in which the history of our field has been embedded in the events and circumstances of its times and in which those times have affected different locales differently to account for conspicuous temporal and (much discussed) geographic imprinting of scholars in the field. My interest piqued by his rich observations and paucity of conclusions, below I pursue in somewhat more detail the sociocultural evolutionary process shaping organization studies. The result is a somewhat different view of our collective history in which, rather than being exogenous, the fragmentation and parochial- ism characteristic of our field are endogenous to the cultural group selection forces shaping it, and so perhaps pointing to alternative futures. The Logic of Sociocultural Evolution Since Donald T. Campbell’s (1965) pioneering paper ‘Variation and Selective Retention in Sociocultural Systems’, the thesis of sociocultural evolutionary models has been that culture is information transmitted from person to person via teaching and imitation, much as genes are information transmitted from person to person through reproduction. Culture, in this view, encompasses the knowl- edge or beliefs that we learn from each other rather than learn for ourselves or inherit genetically. It includes the technical knowledge, language, traditions, habits, sentiments and ideas that guide our participation in social, political and religious life. Cultural evolution differs in many ways from genetic evolution. Perhaps fore- most, culture is a system of inheritance of acquired variation. What we learn for ourselves by hard effort, others often imitate. Additionally, while we are passive recipients of genes, we are active agents of culture. We pick and choose among cultural variants, and modify what we imitate based on experience. Our active decisions act as evolutionary forces shaping culture. Organization Studies 28(1): 37–47 ISSN 0170–8406 Copyright © 2007 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA & New Delhi) Joel A. C. Baum Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, Canada www.egosnet.org/os DOI: 10.1177/0170840607073567 06-073567-Baum.qxd 1/13/2007 12:35 PM Page 37