150 , could it be true?

I have been reading in the topic of ‘modern Darwinism’ the topic argues that humans are hardwired for 200,000 years and their behaviors and traits can still be linked to the first humans, the discipline itself acknowledges the differences in behaviors and by no mean assumes that we will all behave in the same way due to genetic inheritance, personal experiences and cultures, however, the discipline does indeed provide a framework to understand why people tend to act as they do sometimes in ways that don’t seem beneficial to themselves or their businesses.?

The notion is

You can take the person out of the Stone Age, not the Stone Age out of the person (Nicholson,1998)

While it seems that the discipline itself has advocate and proponents, however, the idea behind it is as follows; in natural selection, the survival of the species depends on weeding out undesirable traits both genetically and behaviorally, therefore, Human’s current mind wiring in a sense is what helped the species to survive till now. Without delving too much into the topic, however, this approach helped explaining governing behaviors of people, like; emotions before reason, loss aversion except when threatened, confidence before realism, gossiping, empathy and mind reading…etc. (Nicholson,1998)

Examples?

The author correlated for example the “loss aversion except when threatened” trait back to the stone age humans, whereby, he rightfully argued that to survive the harsh elements of the stone age, the little loss of food would jeopardize the existence, therefore, increase the hunters' probability of risk taking, in the same spirit, the ancient hunters who had enough food and shelter, didn’t assume high risks. In the article, the author argued that while there is no historical record of what stone age people did when experiencing threats, however, it is reasonable to assume that in the face of a threat, a volcano, predator or whatever, those humans who fought back are the ones who survived, hence, the behavior is encoded in subsequent generations.

How to reflect this to today’s world?

“Every financial-markets trader can recite the old saw, “Cut your losses and let your profits run.” The same traders will also tell you that this rational rule of thumb is the hardest thing they have to learn on the job. Their instinct is to take risks as soon as losses start to mount. A stock starts to fall and they double up their positions, for instance. That’s the frantic fight to survive in action. And similarly, it’s instinct that drives people to sell while a stock is still rising. That’s risk aversion in action. That said, experienced traders know how damaging these instincts are; and rules and procedures that force them to cut their and let their losses and let their profits run. But without such rules and procedures, human nature would most likely take its course.” (Nicholson,1998)

Social living

In the same line of thought, Humans are social beings, and they survive with dependencies, therefore, the birth of the concept of a clan…etc. Dunbar (n.d.) from the university of Liverpool, linked the clan size to the brain power of a species and he argued that human’s capacity to form groups is limited to 150 members max., mind you the reference is being made to groups taking care of each other and this requires brain power with things like remembering the people, keeping promises…etc. How does that reflect into today’s organizations? Departments, groups, working together, working with other departments? ??

Is this the reason why family-owned business worldwide with workforces less that 150 employees still employ 60% of all workforces? ?Is this the reason why larger organizations are split into functions, and the different functions go into conflicts? Is this the reason why cellular organization form was successful? Autonomy is essential?

I am not sure!?