Organisational Bio-mimicry: a ecosystem design approach that enables equitable governance and distribution of wealth.

A concept that has been widely overlooked when it comes to operating companies is how governance works within organisums. After all the, other than human, natural world has operated like this for as long as it has existed. We are literally surrounded by self governed organisms, decentralised in their operations, operating successfully and symbiotically, at harmony and in equilibrium.

The word Organisation descends from the Greek ‘Organon’. In biological terms the word Organ describes a collection of tissues that structurally form and specialise to perform a particular function. An organisation and an organ share both the root of their etymology and, I would like to contend, their objective outlook.

An organ serves a purpose for the wider organism, and entity with an organised structure, that can respond to stimuli, grow, reproduce, adapt and maintain homeostasis, it is part of, and I would suggest, that without that organ, it would begin to fail to operate. The organ support the organism and the organism supports the organ, this symbiotic relationship is one which we often take for granted and look at the organism as a whole, without considering its complex and interconnected parts, formed of cells, of which have widely ranging intelligences that we also seem so often to fail to recognise.

The point here is that the organisation and the organism do not actively work to erode environmental system to which the organ operates, there is no attempt for either the organ or the organism to gain control over the other, they are not in competition, but quite the opposite. The organism recognises that if it fails to provide its organs with the necessary resources for operation, it will fail, stop working and die. Therefore the organism seeks those resources, energy.

If we take the human body as the example, resources flow into the organism, in the way of food and water, and the organism processes that fuel. If it was not able to coordinate to operate, we would not be able to move, feel or communicate. One might argue that much of our organism is failing to operate because we are overloading or overstimulating, causing imbalance and breakdown of simple processes that have evolved to keep the organism alive.

When we die, it is only a part of us that dies, it is only the human element that is unable to function any longer, the other complex species that operate in symbiosis with our human cells continues. The bacteria operate until they run out of resources and, if we were to consider a holistic concept of regeneration, one might argue that it is contrary to our moral brain to let those bacteria die and the rest of the organism die, just because the human element has gone.

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Organisations, are an interesting arrangement of power, flow, work, resources, task management and, as is often the case, inequality. The people within these organisaitons are not necessarily afforded the luxury that other moving parts within an ecosystem might have. Individuals with the organisation are remunerated for their time spent working for that organisation, and in the case of profit organisaitons, individuals will also receive money based upon the surplus of money that the organisation might generate. These individuals might have nothing to do with the operations of that organisaiton, just provided the financial backing to enable it come into fruition, because in return it will provide them a profit. A simple analogy here would be paying ones parents because they are the reason for ones existence. But the concept of paying your parents means that one must charge more for ones service. This, is essentially the capitalist machine in operation.

Furthermore, organisaitons are somewhat of a conundrum, a contradiction in terms. On the one hand, they work to try and provide great incentives for employees to stay with them, private pensions, private health care etc etc. They also operate as teams and departments, coordinating the work that needs to be completed or undertaken and dividing tasks accordingly, monitoring towards each set goal. In these senses organisaitons work much like an ecosystem, flow of resources are divided up and distributed to where they are required, budgets are fit to capacity. If we make an analogy with our own organism, the body, this could be realised through the energy needs of our brain. It is not questioned that despite only making up 2-3% of the entire mass of our body, it requires 20% of the energy produced. We flow the resources required to operate to where they are needed to make the ecosystem work, otherwise, we literally break down.

But when it comes to remunerating individuals for their time working, this becomes a whole different ball game, one that is so far from ecosystem operations that it seems that a likely question might become apparent, can individual’s pay bring down an organisation?

Individuals payment from the orgnaisation is the one question that seems unquestionable, it must always go up. But what if this did not have to be the case? Let me unpick this further. As is mostly the case, organisations operate in this way because they work within a capital hierarchy system i.e. the more capital one has, the higher they are in the power system. Those in the positions of power do not want to change this, on the most part, they do not want to enable others to make the choices that might tip the power balance, they do not want to sacrifice their personal position and they have no intention on reducing their salary.

So, the question arises as to if these capital hierarchy orgnaisaitons are fit for purpose for the future? Not only are they driving inequality through an uneven distribution of wealth and power but, due to the nature of their operation they are also the root cause of the destruction of our climate. They are the symptom of capitalism, the extraction principle, when multiplied, enables greater flow of wealth to the minority who coordinate the machine itself.

A counter model to this operation, and, let me be clear, operating charity or not for profit, or trust or public sector, is also a part of this problem, would be to remove the ideology of individualism from the organisation entirely. Operating as an organism, an organisation, is complex and requires each cell to operate in order to bring the organisation to fruition. It might be that there are particular tacit knowledge or skill that are held by individuals (cells or people) within the organisation, that they have honed over years in order to reach that point. This is much like an evolution itself, of cells, that over years, millennia, have come together to form multicellular structures, who, by their own interconnectedness, operate in vastly different ways to the individual cells they were born from. Take our own journey through gestation, from a single cell containing the DNA for all our cells, to divide, replicate, iterate, transform until an entire working ecosystem is created, a human. If information was not passed from cell to cell we would not exist in the way that we do. This might just be the fundamental point that we now must consider, how do we become more like ourselves.

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