ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE OF ANT SOCIETY AND ITS APPLICATION IN TEAMBUILDING – A STUDY

Abstract

Work teams have become popular because they tend to make better decisions, produce better products and services, and create a more engaged workforce than do employees working alone. Team network is effective when the team members work with shared vision, commitment, cooperation and cohesion. Sometimes these aspects are absent in work teams and this leads to lower synergy and effectiveness. Studies reveal that while teams achieve good outcomes, they often fail for one reason or another. As a result teams are sometimes successful and sometimes unsuccessful; hence the performance is not consistent. The reasons for the failure of teams, among others, are inappropriate models used to build teams. Although there are several approaches to build a team, there exists a need for new techniques to build and sustain a more cohesive, cooperative, committed and adaptable team with higher synergy and performance. Nature provides an insight to deal with such team management situations. This study focuses on one of the natures most successful ants’ teams because of their unique social organization and ability to work together cohesively. By studying ants’ organization we are actually learning the wisdom of the nature. This insight could be applied and adapted in organizations to build more effective work teams.