How Evolutionary Thinking Can Transform the Workplace
Sheraton Grand Chicago – Columbus A&B Parlors
Friday August 10th, 1:30 – 4:00PM

David Sloan Wilson
(Binghamton University)
Author of Does Altruism Exist?: Culture, Genes, and the Welfare of Others, Co-Founder of The Evolution Institute

Mark van Vugt
(Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)
Author of Mismatch: How Our Stone Age Brain Deceives Us Every Day (And What We Can Do About It)

Stephen M. Colarelli
(Central Michigan University)
Editor of The Biological Foundations of Organizational Behavior
——— Also featuring ———
Max Beilby (Royal Bank of Scotland)
Charleen Case (University of Michigan)
Kevin M. Kniffin (Cornell University)
An evolutionary worldview has demonstrable benefits for informing many areas of society, including healthcare, sustainability, and education. However, and surprisingly, a domain that has yet to fully embrace evolutionary thinking is that of business and management. Though metaphors and phrases such as “survival of the fittest”, “creative destruction”, and “firm selection” have been tossed around for decades, suggesting that evolutionary forces are at work in the business world, these analogies don’t even begin to appreciate the complexity of business social environments or the forces of genetic and cultural evolution that shape the behaviors of all people, in and out of the workplace. Rethinking business and management from an evolutionary perspective can have profound implications at all scales, from the wellbeing of individual employees, to the performance of firms, to the creation of a sustainable global economy. This multidisciplinary PDW brings together a range of presenters from throughout both the academy and industry to discuss the merits of applying an evolutionary worldview to research, theory and practice in organizations, and how such an approach can in turn enrich our understanding of how to maximize wellbeing and flourishing across individuals and societies.