Rescuing economics and management from Darwin's evolution via death-and-replacement by the Baldwin Effect: learning during a lifetime

The Baldwin Effect is a phenotypic change resulting from observation and learning during an organism’s lifetime that enhances its chances of survival when confronted by a significant environmental change during its lifetime. This chapter goes over the concept of the Baldwin Effect and its emergence in biology. The prominence of Darwinian thinking in socioeconomic and organizational evolutionary theory is then reviewed. This chapter discusses and concludes that Darwinism is an on-and-off phenomenon in social systems and there is a need to recognise that the Baldwin Effect plays a role in socioeconomic and organizational changes.