In this paper we propose a theory of the cultural evolution of the firm. We apply cultural and evolutionary thinking to the questions posed by theories of the firm: What are firms and why do they exist? We argue that firms are best thought of as cultures, as social distributions of modes of thought and forms of externalization. Using the term meme to refer collectively to cultural modes of thought—ideas, beliefs, assumptions, values, interpretive schema, and know-how—we describe culture as a social phenomena, patterns of symbolic communication and behavior that are produced as members of the group enact the memes they have acquired as part of the culture. Memes spread from mind to mind as they are enacted and the resulting cultural patterns are observed and interpreted by others. The uncertainties of interpretation and the possibilities of reinterpretation and recontextualization create variation in the memes as they spread. Over time, firms evolve as a process of the selection, variation, and retention of memes. Our claim is that understanding firms in this way provides a new perspective— what we call the meme’s-eye view—on the question of why we have the firms we have and, by allowing us to shed the functionalist assumptions shared by both economics and knowledge-based theories of the firm, makes possible a genuinely descriptive, as opposed to normative, theory of why we have the firms that we have.

This paper presents a field study of decision-making processes in management teams in two organizations. It reviews existing literature on managerial knowledge structures and decision-making, and identifies methodological and conceptual limitations with these approaches. The authors then develop interpretive case studies of two management teams, which focus on the articulated and social methods used to make decisions. They found that both organizations used rules of thumb or heuristic reasoning in their decision-making, that these rules of thumb functioned as headlines of deeper organizational narratives, and that these narratives were grounded in emotional as well as purely rational considerations. We suggest that the term “guiding principle ” usefully integrates our three findings into a descriptive concept that may be further explored in future research of both a descriptive and prescriptive nature.

This paper provides an intuitive explanation of the mathematical expression of Bayes' rule.) Of course it is intuitively obvious that the probability of urn B is greater than when the signal is b. Holt and Anderson (1996) show that the probability of urn B is still greater than when first two predictions are B and the third person's signal is a

Psychological and sociological factors constrain economic decision-making in many contexts including the online world. In particular, uncertainty limits the optimising behaviour which is often the focus of economic models and so people will be forced to rely on simpler decision-making rules when managing information online. Behavioural economics and economic psychology emphasise that people will make many mistakes in processing information and planning for the future and these mistakes will also distort learning processes. Emotions and visceral factors will play a key role- not only affecting people’s actions and choices but also the connection between information, learning and choices. All these forces will have wide-ranging implications for information security management and this paper summarises some of the key insights and policy lessons for information security.