ABOUT DIVERSITY IN ORGANISATIONAL TRAJECTORIES

The fact of organisational diversity leads us to put forward the paradox of " dynamic fit ". This serves as the basis for an alternative view of Lamarckism as applied to social sciences, which can provide a more efficient explanation of regular evolution in firms and populations. However, when a firm is trapped in a lock-in situation, Darwinian selection best explains how the system will behave. Thus we propose a continuum from alternative Lamarckism at one end, through Lamarckism, to Darwinism at the other end, in order to understand what evolutionary principles are appropriate to specific situations.