Core design principles for nurturing organization-level selection

Dynamic relationships between individuals and groups have been a focus for evolutionary theorists and modelers for decades. Among evolutionists, selfish gene theory promotes reductionist approaches while multilevel selection theory encourages a context-sensitive approach that appreciates that individuals and groups can both matter. Among economists, a comparable contrast is found wherein the reductionist shareholder primacy theory most associated with Nobel laureate Milton Friedman is very different from the context-sensitive focus on managing common resources that Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom pioneered. In this article, we examine whether the core design principles that Ostrom advanced can cultivate selection at supra-individual levels across different domains. We show that Ostrom�s design principles that were forged in the context of managing natural resources are associated with positive outcomes for human social groups across a variety of functional domains.