Organizations devoted to the production of goods and services, such as guilds, partnerships and modern corporations, have dominated the economic landscape in our species’ history. We develop an explanation for their evolution drawing from cultural evolution theory. A basic tenet of this theory is that social learning, under certain conditions, allows for the diffusion of innovations in society and, therefore, the accumulation of culture. Our model shows that these organizations provide such conditions by possessing two characteristics, both prevalent in real world organizations: exclusivity of membership and more effective social learning within their boundaries. The model and its extensions parsimoniously explain the cooperative nature of the social learning advantage, organizational specialization, organizational rigidity and the locus of innovation. We find supportive evidence for our predictions using a sample of premodern societies drawn from the Ethnographic Atlas. Understanding the nature of these organizations informs the debate about their role in society.

致力于生产商品和服务的组织，例如公会、合伙企业和现代公司，在我们物种的历史上主导了经济格局。我们从文化进化理论中对它们的进化进行了解释。该理论的一个基本原则是，在特定条件下，社会学习允许创新在社会中的传播，从而允许文化的积累。我们的模型表明，这些组织通过拥有两个在现实世界组织中普遍存在的特征来提供这样的条件：成员资格的排他性和在其边界内更有效的社会学习。该模型及其扩展简洁地解释了社会学习优势、组织专业化、组织刚性和创新点。我们使用从 Ethnographic Atlas 中抽取的前现代社会样本，为我们的预测找到了支持性证据。了解这些组织的性质有助于讨论它们在社会中的作用。