There is much to admire in David Sloan Wilson’s target essay, “On the Concept of Paradigms and a New Paradigm for Evolving Cooperative Systems.” (Wilson, 2026) As someone who has devoted his scholarly life to the social science of management and governance, I welcome—indeed, feel relieved by—his insistence that paradigms must score high on two criteria: (1) conformance to factual knowledge and (2) the ability to inform appropriate action.
In a historical moment that is increasingly described as polycrisis, we do not have the luxury of paradigms that are “true enough” for academic debate while remaining impotent—or actively harmful—when translated into institutional design.
Wilson’s operational definition is also clarifying: a paradigm is “an interlocking set of ideas that makes sense of the world but also blinds us to other possibilities.” (Wilson, 2026)
The emphasis on “interlocking” matters. It helps explain why the currently dominant economistic worldview has been able to colonize public policy and much of management education “on the strength of its coherence,” even while producing “toxic consequences.”
Orthodox economics offers a parsimonious anthropology and an apparently elegant social physics: methodological individualism, atomistic rationality, and equilibrating markets. Wilson is right that the “archipelago nature” of alternative social sciences has been a severe liability, leaving islands of insight without a shared grammar that can rival the old paradigm’s portability across domains.
My commentary offers an additional, complementary perspective—one that is meant not to oppose Wilson’s proposal, but to protect it from a predictable failure mode: paradigmatic capture. The risk is not that complex systems science and evolutionary science are wrong. Rather, the risk is that, absent a crisp alternative “interlocking set of ideas” about who the human person is and what organizing is for, the new toolkit will be assimilated into the old paradigm as a set of upgraded instruments for essentially the same ends. Wilson himself anticipates the need for “work…to establish a common vocabulary,” and he notes that complex adaptive systems can be understood in two distinct ways—CAS1 (a system that is adaptive as a system) and CAS2 (a system composed of agents pursuing their respective strategies.
This distinction is decisive: the economistic paradigm excels at CAS2 stories (clever agents optimizing), but it is largely blind to CAS1 conditions (design features that make the whole system cooperative, resilient, and life-affirming). If we do not explicitly re-anchor the “subject” and “object” of organizing, CAS language will be recruited to rationalize smarter extraction, more sophisticated manipulation, and more efficient short-termism—precisely the patterns that have made our institutions brittle.
The hidden strength of the old paradigm: a simple anthropology plus a simple purpose
The dominant economistic paradigm remains influential not because it satisfies Wilson’s Criterion 1 (it does not), but because it offers a simple and internally reinforcing triad:
- Subject (ontology): humans are atomistic, self-interested utility maximizers (Homo economicus).
- Verb (process): they compete and contract to maximize preference satisfaction under constraints.
- Object (teleology): the goal of organizing is utility maximization, operationalized as growth, profit, and shareholder value.
Even when scholars amend the verb—say, by adding bounded rationality, pro-social preferences, nudges, heuristics, or relational contracts—the ontology and teleology often remain intact. This is why many “new economics” movements, admirable as they are, struggle to unseat the old paradigm: they become patches rather than replacements.
Wilson’s target essay already does vital work against this inertia. It provides an operational definition of paradigms, identifies the dominance of an “orthodox/neoliberal” paradigm grounded in Homo economicus, and argues for a genuinely new paradigm that integrates evolutionary and complex systems science.
Yet, I suggest that the proposal will become more adoptable and less capturable if it more explicitly articulates the subject and the object, not only the verb.
A humanistic complement: specify the subject and the object, not only the verb
Here is my constructive push: keep Wilson’s “verb” (cultural evolution + complex systems design), but complement it with an explicit humanistic ontology and an explicit flourishing-centered teleology.
Subject (who we are): Homo sapiens is an evolved, relational, meaning-seeking, moral animal—eusocial by design.
Across the humanistic and positive traditions in psychology and organization studies, the empirical picture is hard to reconcile with the caricature of the human being as a purely self-interested calculator. In our own synthesis work, we argue that contemporary social science is increasingly converging on a more accurate image of the human person—one that reflects both our cooperative inheritance and our vulnerability to mismatch conditions in modern institutions.
This does not deny darker potentials; it clarifies them. Our psychological architecture contains both “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” possibilities, and culture, education, and governance determine which side is systematically cultivated.
A particularly useful articulation of the human subject—precisely because it is empirically oriented yet still simple enough to travel—is the four-drive theory: humans are motivated by the drives to acquire, bond, comprehend, and defend. (Pirson 2017)
Importantly, these drives operate concurrently and require balance rather than maximization.
This complements Wilson’s CAS1/CAS2 distinction: an organization becomes a CAS1 system only when its governance reliably balances these drives at individual, group, and institutional levels—so that cooperation is not merely a moral aspiration but a designed reality.
Object (what organizing is for): the aim is dignity and flourishing, not utility maximization.
Even if we accept that humans optimize and adapt, the decisive question remains: optimize toward what? If the object remains “utility,” then pro-sociality becomes a tactic, virtue becomes branding, and cooperation becomes instrumentally tolerated when it pays. Humanistic management insists on a different object: protecting dignity and promoting human and planetary flourishing as conditions for survival. In our teaching and writing, we contrast an economistic mindset (maximization of profit/power) with a humanistic one in which the four drives are treated as intrinsically important and must be held in balance for people to experience dignity, well-being, and flourishing.
The “bagel” or “donut” metaphor captures this (Pirson, 2026; Raworth, 2017): a protected inner core (dignity thresholds) and an outer boundary (the planetary boundaries) with the managerial task framed as stewardship rather than extraction to create the conditions for human and planetary flourishing. (see more in Pirson, 2026; Raworth, 2017)
Strengthening the new paradigm with aligned humanistic fields: Positive Organizational Scholarship and Positive Psychology
The new paradigm does not exist in a vacuum, and many humanistic sciences provide evidence to strengthen it, including positive psychology and Positive Organizational Scholarship (POS). These aligned fields can become evidence engines and translation devices for Wilson’s new paradigm.
POS emerged from positive psychology’s humanist turn toward strengths, meaning, virtue, resilience, and well-being, and it explicitly challenged the “REMM-style” baseline assumptions that dominate economistic management thinking. (Pirson, 2017)
POS supplies three indispensable contributions to Wilson’s paradigm project. (Cameron et al., 2003)
- A vocabulary for “the good” that remains empirically discussable.
POS and positive psychology did not merely moralize; they operationalized. They provided constructs—psychological safety, high-quality connections, meaning, strengths, hope, efficacy, resilience, virtuousness—that can be measured, cultivated, and linked to performance without collapsing into economistic reduction. (Cameron et al, 2003; Deci& Ryan, 2000; Seligman & Csikszentmihaly, 2000) This helps address Wilson’s demand that paradigms inform appropriate action, not merely describe reality. - Mid-range mechanisms that explain how cooperation becomes durable.
Wilson calls for learning-by-doing, treating every prosocial change effort as an experiment in cultural evolution. POS provides a thick library of mechanisms that explain how micro-practices scale (Deci & Ryan, 2000; Seligman & Csikszentmihaly, 2000): how recognition routines alter identity and energy; how gratitude changes relational dynamics; how compassion enables resilience; how psychological safety makes voice and learning possible; how purpose can be institutionalized rather than romanticized. In short, POS offers many of the “how” links between CAS1 design and lived experience. - A bridge from individual flourishing to group-level design principles.
One of the most promising convergence points between Wilson’s paradigm and humanistic management is the empirical study of core design principles for cooperation and flourishing. In our joint work, we are integrating Darwinian insights and Aristotelian philosophy. We argue that flourishing is not merely an individual trait but a property of persons-in-context, especially in teams and workplaces. (Pirson et al. 2026) We also underscore that modern organizational structures often create evolutionary mismatch conditions—isolating, abstract, status-anxious, chronically stressful environments that systematically undermine flourishing.
Here, POS’s relational lens and Wilson’s cultural-evolutionary lens can meet on common empirical ground: what are the design principles by which cooperative systems become stable, inclusive, and generative over time?
A proposed “interlocking set of ideas” to protect the new paradigm from capture
To accelerate adoption, while resisting paradigm washing, I propose a concise humanistic complement that could interlock with Wilson’s evolutionary/CAS foundation:
- Ontology (Subject): Humans are evolved, relational, moral, meaning-seeking beings whose basic drives include acquiring, bonding, comprehending, and defending, requiring balance rather than maximization.
- Teleology (Object): The purpose of organizing is to protect dignity and enable flourishing (human and planetary), not to maximize utility or extract value.
- Mechanism (Verb): Organizations are culturally evolving complex systems; they become adaptive-as-systems (CAS1) only when governance and practices reliably produce prosocial conditions—conditions that can be experimentally refined through learning-by-doing.
This triad does not compete with Wilson’s paradigm; it stabilizes it. It specifies what the economistic paradigm oversimplifies: the human being is not merely a preference engine, and society is not merely a market. At the same time, it keeps Wilson’s pragmatic emphasis: the goal is not ideological purity but paradigmatic effectiveness—coherence that can travel across disciplines, levels of analysis, and guide action quickly, at a time when “time is of the essence.”
Concluding affirmation: two cheers, and a safeguard
So: two cheers for the new paradigm as Wilson articulates it—the integration of evolutionary science and complex systems science is exactly the kind of coherent alternative that can finally rival the economistic paradigm’s portability.
My “additional cheer” is a safeguard: the new paradigm will be more transformative—and less likely to become a smarter tool for the old ends—if it explicitly anchors itself in a humanistic ontology and a flourishing-centered teleology.
In management and governance, the deepest question is never only “how do systems adapt?” but “what kind of adaptation counts as success?” POS and positive psychology have already shown that flourishing is not soft sentiment; it is empirically tractable, organizationally consequential, and morally urgent. Humanistic management adds the final, decisive step: flourishing and dignity are not “positive deviations” from business-as-usual. They are the new normal—because they are prerequisites for survival.
References:
Cameron, K. S., Dutton, J. E., & Quinn, R. E. (Eds.). (2003). Positive organizational scholarship: Foundations of a new discipline. Berrett-Koehler.
Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The “what” and “why” of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11(4), 227–268.
Fredrickson, B. L. (2001). The role of positive emotions in positive psychology: The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. American Psychologist, 56(3), 218–226.
Keyes, C. L. M. (2002). The mental health continuum: From languishing to flourishing in life. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 43(2), 207–222.
Luthans, F. (2002). Positive organizational behavior: Developing and managing psychological strengths. Academy of Management Executive, 16(1), 57–72.
Pirson, M. (2017). Humanistic management: Protecting dignity and promoting well-being, Cambridge University Press
Pirson, M. (2026). Humanistic management and leadership. Cambridge University Press
Pirson, M., Yemiscigil, A., Gibbons, S., Wilson, D.S. (2025): When Darwin met Aristotle, Presentation at Society for Business Ethics, Copenhagen, 2025.
Raworth, K. (2017). Doughnut economics: Seven ways to think like a 21st-century economist: Chelsea Green.
Seligman, M. E. P., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2000). Positive psychology: An introduction, American Psychologist, 55(1), 5–14.
Wilson, D. S. (2026). On the concept of paradigms and a new paradigm for evolving cooperative systems, This View of Life, Jan. 7, 2026.
