The metaphor on living organisms is not original.
Organizational Behavior Studies have already tried to identify the mimicry between how corporates function and the organic dynamics of the nature the human body itself. The main thesis, already widely explored by recognized authors, has been on homeostasis, that is, the search for a systemic balance through the interaction of different systems and flows. But it is also important to search for an evolutionist look into organizations.
The concept seems to be particularly interesting to a contemporary perspective of the movement of organizational phenomena in current times.
The General Theory of Systems had its origin in the studies of the Austrian biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy between 950 and 1960, identifying the relations between social and natural sciences. The system mentions a set of interactions and interdependent parts that, collectively, constitute a legitimate whole with defined directions and functions. Surrounding the system, the environment is seen as a set of orbital elements that can produce changes in the state of the system.
Thus, open systems experience interactions with the environment in which they are inserted, generating feedback that can be positive or negative within the dynamics of beneficial or harmful regenerative self-regulation by the system and its parts. On the other hand, closed systems are those that are neither influenced by, nor influence the environment around them. Certainly, organizations are open systems in which the internal context (departments, processes, and people) interacts with the external environment (market, politics, society, nature).
Phenomena as entropy (decay) versus syntony (regeneration) or homeostasis (striking a proper balance with the environment) versus heterostasis (return to the balance after the consumption of the system) help us to evaluate the organizational development inserted in the inexorable dynamics of the market environment.
For me, one of the main insights involving the metaphor of living organisms leads us to the study of major natural biomes in opposition to monocultural farming While the latter includes productivity, asepsis, and technology, in the former, unpredictability, the organic and symbiosis prevail. There is nothing natural about industrial plantations; there is no planning in the naturally rebellious biomes. Both exert different functions within the anthropocentric dynamic.
Comparing biomes and monocultures with the organizational contexts of the 20th century would appear to be an interesting intellectual reflection on the challenges of the 21st century. At some moment of euphoria following Second Industrial Revolution, humanity imagined it would be possible to reproduce the mechanical principles of planning in the organizational environment, as well as in the manufacturing and farming environments. In fact, the productivity obtained in manufacturing facilities was very important, making major companies the archetypal winners in the search for more efficient average variable costs. In the countryside, the battles were more inglorious, but in spite of this, the battles against the imperatives of nature have not been lost on account of extensive use of pesticides and, more recently, genetic mutations. Yet in the organizational field, it would appear that the results have been more ambiguous: large-scale operational planning has certainly had its victories, but perhaps less mechanical than the ideal imagined by the great thinkers and entrepreneurs of the end of the XIX Century.
The organizational context as an open system in fact has benefited from a certain dose of cartesian planning - and more recently from the quintillions of data scrutinized by algorithms - but it remains as an open system, permeable to a certain extent by the dynamics of the surrounding external environment. The analogy with biomes seems to offer us an interesting perspective on the phenomena of evaluation.
A biome possesses three main characteristics not observed jointly in monoculture: diversity, quantity, and connectivity. The diversity of the species in immense and interdependent quantities for multiple connections is the great organic evolutionist lever of biomes. So then, this trio should also be present within the dynamics of the corporate contexts of major organizations. Nevertheless, the managerial impetus in favour of productivity, control and predictability can be precisely the counterforce to the systemic complex vital to a company’s organic evolution.
In the current context of very fast transformation cycles, the external environment becomes even more hostile to the organizational open system. Adapting in a continuous and rapid manner is not something trivial for organizations in search of its internal balance at all costs. The lack of connected diversity in quantity is becoming the key weakness of major companies in comparison with the powerful structured open platforms in ecosystems consisting of economic micro agents.
The ability of be organizational organ to oppose, or to adapt in some symbiotic format to the efficient innovative power of the ecosystems, is already a question of survival.
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Daniel Augusto Motta, PhD, MSc
Founder & CEO BMI Blue Management Institute
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