The business governance model defines the capacity of an organization to grow. Only democratic organizations can use unicist business objects.

Large organizations are basically democratic at the top, have a significant authoritarian component in the middle management and a trend toward individualism at the bottom.

This is counterintuitive for most of the people in the business world. They consider that the top management is authoritarian.

But what is the meaning of democracy in business?

Democracy doesn’t imply following the popular saying: “Eat excrements, millions of flies cannot be wrong”.

Democracy in business implies that the values of the arguments are given by their foundations and not by who is posing them.

Top managers need to be democratic in order to listen to the market while they influence it. Companies can only grow if they listen to reality and are able to adapt to it. That is the meaning of democracy in business.

But there are people who need to control things and cannot deal with divergent positions. In this case a company can only grow in low-cost/ low-value markets. When the market buys “price” the individual just needs to follow the market. There is no influence needed. Authoritarian driven companies are basically commodity sellers. When they manage their business processes adequately they might be extremely profitable.

When authoritarian governance prevails the business has a structural problem to grow.

Individualistic companies are naturally artists or solopreneurs. When they are artists the business man / woman is their agent.

When they are solopreneurs they just sell what they need. Individualistic companies cannot grow because they do not do what the market demands, they do what they want to do.

Individualistic governance drives naturally towards extinction or bankruptcy. They inevitably die with the “owner”.

But it has to be considered that the energy demanded to manage a business in a democratic way is extremely high. It is easier to run it in an authoritarian way. Individualists do not run businesses; that is why the energy consumption is very low. They just sell themselves.

Request more information: n.i.brown@unicist.org

Peter Belohlavek

NOTE: The Unicist Research Institute is the major research organization in the world in its specialty based on more than 3,000 researches in complexity sciences applied to individual, institutional and social evolution.