Companies can be worse than plant roots in self/non-self recognition

Competition and miscommunication among company departments harms the organisation: the story of Volvo
George ILIEV

(Mangrove tree, Wikipedia)

As the roots of a plant grow, the root branches of the same organism recognise each other (the underlying mechanism for that is still unclear) and stay out of each other's reach as much as possible: "plants develop fewer and shorter roots in the presence of other roots of the same individual". This is an evolutionary adaptation that minimises direct competition for nutrients between parts of the same organism. On the contrary, the roots can speed up their rate of growth if surrounded by roots of other plants, in order to be successful in competing externally.

Sadly internal cooperation is not always the norm in the corporate world. Company departments can be notoriously bad at synchronising their actions and sometimes even compete against each other. A case in point is the following story at car-maker Volvo in Sweden in the mid-1990s:

Volvo was accumulating a large stock of cars painted green. To reduce the stockpile, the sales department began selling green-coloured cars at a discount. Unfortunately no one told the manufacturing team down on the production line. No sooner had the production managers seen demand for green cars perking up, they immediately ramped up the production of green cars to build up the inventory (a typical supply-chain phenomenon known as the bullwhip effect)

Thus the cooperative plant roots seem to avoid "biting the dust" even if they literally do this all the time.