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Memes and Narrative Analysis: a Potential Direction for the Development of Neo-Darwinian Orientated Research in Organisations

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Memes and Narrative Analysis: a Potential Direction for the Development of Neo-Darwinian Orientated Research in Organisations Memes and narrative analysis: A potential direction for the development of neo-Darwinian orientated research in organisations. GILL, Jameson Available from Sheffield Hallam University Research Archive (SHURA) at: http://shura.shu.ac.uk/4241/ This document is the author deposited version. You are advised to consult the publisher's version if you wish to cite from it. Published version GILL, Jameson (2011). Memes and narrative analysis: A potential direction for the development of neo-Darwinian orientated research in organisations. In: Euram 11 : proceedings of the European Academy of Management. European Academy of Management. Copyright and re-use policy See http://shura.shu.ac.uk/information.html Sheffield Hallam University Research Archive http://shura.shu.ac.uk Memes and narrative analysis: A potential direction for the development of neo-Darwinian orientated research in organisations. Short running title suggestions: Applying memetics to organisations A way to look for organisational genes Firms, memes and evolution 1 Abstract A number of authors have contributed to a diverse range of views concerning the possibility of evolutionary processes acting in organisations. Theories based on a self replicating cultural equivalent to the gene posit the 'meme' as the cultural replicator. A review of the memetic literature as part of study towards PhD empirical work has highlighted a lack of consensus in the memetic literature leading to difficulties in deciding on a method for operationalising research questions. The article describes how a dependence on the gene analogy, associated with much memetic knowledge, has led to unrecognised assumptions which are carried into memetic accounts of culture and identifies unresolved philosophical dilemmas. To achieve progress beyond the limited existing memetic empirical research a move to mainstream social science method is suggested in the form of narrative analysis. Key Words: Meme, Memetics, Narrative, Storytelling 2 Background and Introduction This paper is based on literature reviewed as part of my PhD study which investigates the possibility of designing a memetic approach to understanding the organisational culture of a small UK printing firm. I had originally approached the subject of memes from a starting perspective which was sympathetic to the value of the meme concept as a potential explanatory theory of culture but in searching for a rigorous methodology for empirical work, which could satisfy the needs of the PhD examination criteria, my viewpoint has become progressively more sceptical. Here, I describe how working with the memetic literature has led to my abduction of one potential empirical method which is inferred in the literature. My background in organisations has been largely based in the sales and marketing functions of firms. However, having spent twenty years in industry I had reached the conclusion that much of what constitutes the body of marketing knowledge i.e. that which appears as the contents of most mainstream marketing textbooks is, at best, difficult to implement in the workplace and at worst, of no practical use as a method of day to day working. In fact, such marketing theory had begun to seem weak when pitted against alternative organisational orientations/functions such as production or finance, for example. My interest in memes began when I read the theory of the selfish gene (Dawkins, 1976; 1989) during my time working in the print industry. The theory in biology made intuitive sense to me and I was intrigued by the suggestion that culture might have a similar underpinning evolutionary dynamic which could perhaps offer a refreshing alternative view of how life in an organisation may play itself out. My experience of the repetition of working practices, routines and workplace terminology seemed to lend plenty of anecdotal evidence 3 for repeating or even replicating pieces of culture and I remember, in particular, being struck by how I could enter an open plan office humming a tune and then hear the tune repeated back from a colleague a little later. I was motivated to investigate the possibility of memes in organisations and made the work the basis of my PhD. In this paper, I summarise some of my insights which followed a review of the memetics literature and I suggest how a potential methodological approach might be designed. I return briefly to the basic principles of replication which underpin Richard Dawkins‟ description of biological evolution and then discuss the subsequent attempts to apply the same concept to culture via memes. However, it is my contention; having reviewed the various facets of the literature, that the theoretical development of memes has not been accompanied by sufficient empirical research for such a long period of time that the degree of variation in the theory means an empirical study design is not straightforward. Many assumptions are built in to the alternative stories of memes and they cannot all be accounted for at once. However, a critical review of the literature has revealed some assumptions which I feel should be ruled out of an initial empirical investigation thereby increasing, the chance of such a methodology becoming a sufficiently widely accepted approach within the social sciences to encourage and enable further empirical work and in turn more valid reflections on the theory. Finding Replicators In „The Selfish Gene‟ (Dawkins 1976; 1989) and later in „The Extended Phenotype‟ (Dawkins, 1982; 1999a) Richard Dawkins outlines a replicator orientated view of biological life where the gene is the replicator in question. The theory posits the perspective that all such 4 life is the product of a blind evolutionary algorithm which operates because genes evolve complex life as a result of the natural selection of some genes over others. The organisms which have emerged are no more than the survival machines/strategy combinations which the genes have discovered through trial and error in the environment they populate. The selection mechanism is that of differential survival and reproduction of organisms which results in differential survival and replication of the genes that built the organisms. Having elevated the gene to a starring role in his story of evolution, Dawkins speculated about the assumed primacy of genes as the sole type of replicators influencing life on Earth, by postulating how an alternative replicator may also be making copies of itself via a separate but similar process of evolution leading, in turn, to an alternative complexity. The replicator suggested to „cut the gene down to size‟ (Dawkins, 1999b) was a replicator that could explain those aspects of human behaviour which stretch beyond explanations based wholly on genetics, i.e. those behaviours which constitute human culture. Memetic Theorising Having suggested this hypothetical replicator and named it the „meme‟ (Dawkins, 1976) a number of writers, who presumably like me intuitively appreciated the clarity of the concept, were inspired to construct their visions of how such a replicator may manifest a system of evolved cultural phenomena and how the process and its products may explain human cultures and how we experience them. These visions, notably Blackmore (1999), Dennett (1991), Aunger (2002), Brodie (1996), Lynch (1996), Distin (2005) have been accompanied by a number of applied versions of the theory, some related to organisations. For example, Price and Shaw (1998) develop an explanation of how the cultural patterns 5 experienced in organisations could be construed as the product of memes and Weeks and Galunic (2003) suggest the organisational form known as the „firm‟ could be the product of a successful complex of memes. However, none of the above studies are based on primary empirical research. Rather, it is the usual practice to selectively pick examples from culture to help illustrate how memes may work and therefore convenient memes tend to be invoked to help description rather than candidates for real memes discovered in their cultural settings. Despite a lack of the primary empirical evidence for memes which would usually be characteristic of both valid theory building and testing (Gill and Johnson, 2002), the field of study which links memes and culture has come to be known as memetics, thereby assuming in language at least, the status of a scientific discipline. Of course, genetics provides a mainstream sister science and those who have written on the subject of memetics lean heavily on genetic analogy for ideas, metaphor and validity. The notion of universal Darwinism (Dennett, 1995) lends this practice legitimacy. For example, Distin (2005) searches for cultural DNA, Brodie (1996), Dawkins (1993) and Lynch (1996) warn of viruses and contagion of the mind and Blackmore (2010) refers to cultural evolution as the offspring of a biological species. In spite of the paucity of empirical evidence those exploring the theoretical aspects of memes have not been deterred from progressively adding to theory. For example, for Blackmore (1999; 2010) anything which people copy constitutes a meme. Based on this assumption Blackmore (2010) has invoked yet another replicator which is enabled by the success of the memes, the teme, or a unit of information which is copied by technology alone without the need for directly using the human brain for transmission. Problems with Memetic Theorising 6 The lack of empirical pruning of memetic theory has led to wide variation in the body of memetic theory maintained by, in some cases, the rather glib truth claims, such as Blackmore‟s naively empirically circular argument mentioned above. Such arguments are eschewed by mainstream social science, cognisant of the reflexive nature of social knowledge (Johnson and Duberley, 2000). The resulting mass of unsubstantiated theory, in place of empirically demonstrated research findings, means there is no obvious methodology for the would-be memetic field researcher to adopt, especially a researcher who wishes to not assume the existence of memes at the outset of their investigations. The variation in theoretical standpoints in the memetics literature can be illustrated by reviewing the different assumptions regarding human agency.
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