2024/08/24 by Alexander Ebner
Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Social Sciences · Business, Management and Accounting · #Economic Theory and Institutions #Political Economy and Marxism #Management and Organizational Studies
paper · pdf · doi:10.1177/00113921241271850
The most promising perspectives for a transdisciplinary dialogue between economics and sociology may be identified in the sub-disciplinary fields of evolutionary economics and economic sociology. Both share a common intellectual legacy in the differentiation of the social sciences. The economic and sociological work of Joseph Schumpeter provides an outstanding point of cross-disciplinary transgression and reintegration. In this context, this article claims that it is a curious fact that the role of technological and organizational innovation as a driving force of capitalist evolution characterized by disruptive change has become the paradigmatic foundation of related debates in evolutionary economics, but not in economic sociology. Of course, in economic sociology, technological change has been repeatedly covered regarding the social structures and network relations underpinning technological change in various settings of organizations, industries, markets and spaces. Yet the phenomenon of the introduction of novelty as such, drawing on constellations of power and domination in the context of radical uncertainty, enforcing the disruption and reconfiguration of social relations has remained rather underrepresented in the major strands of sociological reasoning on economic affairs. This assessment holds especially for neo-institutionalist reasoning, which emphasizes the drive towards stability in industries and markets, and therefore underestimates the actual characteristic of capitalism an innovation-driven system of persistently radical changes. Elaborating on this concern, this article outlines the basic relationship between evolutionary economics and economic sociology as point of departure for presenting the evolutionary approach to innovation as a promising concept for future reasoning in economic sociology. In conclusion, this implies that bringing innovation back into economic sociology implies a revitalization of Schumpeterian positions while entering a transdisciplinary dialogue with current advances in evolutionary economics and related fields of innovation studies.