Bio-chart to know about whether you are primitive or advanced – HR message

Those who have studied plant biology and plant breeding would know the meaning of the following terms such as ‘plants with bisexual flowers’ and ‘monoecious’ & ‘dioecious’ plants. What do they really convey to the management students or to the corporate leaders at large?

The true story of the evolution of a corporate can be learned and understood from the above biological phenomena of many plants. Any corporate at birth would be small and less organized. With time, when business starts growing the corporate would start to expand its activities. The first change they would initiate will be the creation of different departments to decentralize the activities.

The same corporate will have several departments/functions and SBU’s to meet different business needs and expansion.

Look at the marvel of nature from the growth point of view of a corporate. During the evolution of flowering plants (Angiosperms), they formed into three types viz., bisexual flower bearing plants, monoecious and dioecious plants.

The bisexual flowering plants are the one with flowers having both male and female parts in the same flower. This is typically as same as the early stage of a corporate where there will be no separate departments or functions and everything is done largely by the same group of people like how a bisexual flower will have both male and female parts.

All work in the corporate is done by the single or a group of people and who largely assumed to be experts in many areas of specialization. None can become an expert in all areas of specialization. Hence the growth of such corporate will be very slow and, if they continue with the same work culture, may not grow beyond a point. It is true for bisexual plants as well. Plants having bisexual flowers require specialists for pollination and hence the fruit formations in such plants are highly restricted or limited due to their primitivism.

To maximize the pollination and propagation, nature had favored dioecious flowering system in some plants.

In dioecious plants, both the male and female flower is formed separately in the same plant. The advantage of this system is that specialist pollinators are not required and, in the given flowering season, maximum pollination advantage can be achieved as they have separate male and female flower is present in them. The success and relative abundance of dioecious plants in nature are high when compared to plants with bisexual flowers. A corporate with different functions such as R&D, Purchase, Finance, HR, Accounts operating etc, would grow faster than an organization where all such activities are done by one single department or a select group of people.

The third type plant – monoecious are different from the rest. Where the male flower is produced separately in a male plant and the female flower is produced separately in a female plant. When the corporate expand geographically, they do carry out different activities in different parts of the world. Integration is done later, although such process may appear costly.

Making certain components in some parts of the world will be advantageous than doing it everywhere. Many corporate would prefer to move to tax-free zone for manufacturing and later distribution is done throughout. This is what exactly about monoecious plants.

Monoecious plants represent the highest form of evolution. When the male and female plants are separate, both could contribute their best during procreation. Whereas, such possibility is not there in plants with bisexual flower or plants that are dioecious. In both cases, all events are occurring in the same plant.

The success story of most MNC’s certainly cues from the evolution of monoecious plants.

Corporate must analyze their functioning style and must understand whether they are like ‘plants with bisexual flower’ or dioecious or monoecious plants.

Dr. S Ranganathan