The recent growth in research on the topic of evolutionary novelties inspired this volume of Research in the Sociology of Organizations. While previous sociological work has done an admirable job of understanding selection and differentiation processes, it has widely ignored the origin of...

This research argues that variations in the interplay between cultural assimilation and cultural diffusion have played a significant role in giving rise to differential patterns of economic development across the globe. Societies that were geographically less vulnerable to cultural diffusion,...