Dunbar

While reading The Lean Mindset: Ask the Right Questions I stumbled upon The Dunbar Number (page 29 in my version of the book). Robin Dunbar studied groups of apes, it seemed that the size of the group was related to the size of the neocortex of the primates. Extrapolated to humans this gives the number of around 150 people that one individual is capable of tracking the social relationship of.

There are some common sizes of groups:

1. An "inner circle" of about three to five very close friends or family members.
2. A "sympathy group" of 12 to 15 close friends who care about each others faith
3. A "hunting group" of 30 to 40 who work together to accomplish a task
4. A "clan" of 150 people who maintain stable interpersonal relationships
5. A "tribe" of about 500 to 2500 people who speak the same language or dialect

How should this work in a company? The inner circle are the direct teammember you work with the most, the sympathy group is your team (scrum says seven people on average per team, this would mean at least two teams here). The hunting group would be all the teams that work on the same product from conception to production (so four to six teams), this would include all disciplines necessary to run the business around the product. The clan would be a small company or department that makes three to five products. The tribe would be the company with company values, vision and mission, the tribe would be the scope of the culture of the organisation.

Now I'm wondering if this would work. What will happen if a company will outgrow the number of the tribe? Should a company split up? Will preformance drop? And on the other hand, if the sympathy group consists of two teams, what would be the composition of those groups and what relation would they have to the hunting group?

Any thoughts?