Ant colonies: building complex organizations with minuscule brains and no leaders

Abstract

Thus far the articles in the series JOD calls the "Organization Zoo" have employed the notion of a "zoo" metaphorically to describe an array of human institutions. Here we take the term literally to consider the design of the most complex organizations in the living world beside those of humans, a favorite of insect zoos around the world: ant colonies. We consider individuality and group identity in the functioning of ant organizations; advantages of a flat organization without hierarchies or leaders; self-organization; direct and indirect communication; job specialization; labor coordination; and the role of errors in innovation. The likely value and limitations of comparing ant and human organizations are briefly examined.

Strategy and Uncertainty: Resource-Based View, Strategy-Creation View, and the Hybrid Between Them

“…For example, as uncertainty increases, how do behavioral biases influence SC (Furr & Eggers, 2021)? Does strategy as thinking play out at the collective level (not just individual), as seen in the distributed intelligence of ant colonies (Moffat et al, 2021)? How do strategists gain breakthrough insights?…”

How flat can it get? From better at flatter to the promise of the decentralized, boundaryless organization

“…However, when also relaxing the second assumptionthat a flat organization would (roughly) follow the same boundaries for membership in the organization as its hierarchical predecessor-there may be new perspectives emerging on just what flat organizations can do and how much information they may process effectively (see also Baldwin and von Hippel 2011;Benkler 2016;Choudhury et al 2020;Hsieh et al 2018;Majchrzak et al 2018;Moffett et al 2021). Specifically, as Reitzig notes himself, a key factor toward the success of decentralized organizations is having excess resources-so-called slack (see also Cyert and March 1963;Galbraith 1973).…”

Elgar Introduction to Designing Organizations

“…In summary, some organizations are reimagining themselves in ways closer to complex systems with a measure of self-organization, such as ant colonies (Moffett et al, 2021). They are characterized by the fact that collective intelligence is assumed as a characteristic of the group rather than a possession of the individuals composing the group (Woolley et al, 2010).…”