When two elements join together to propagate something new, there exists a certain reciprocity in the relationship. The term reciprocity speaks to the way they interact and the way they influence each other. You can see examples of reciprocal relationships everywhere in the natural world.
Take the reciprocal relationship among bees and flowers. Bees visit flowers to gather pollen, and they transfer pollen to other flowers, helping the flowers to reproduce. Bees get honey and flowers get baby flowers.
In the ocean, fish visit cleaning stations where cleaner shrimp crawl all over them to feed on the parasites attached to their skin. There is a reciprocal relationship between the two parties. The fish get detailing and the shrimp get dinner.
Fish may reciprocate the favor with the hippo at the San Antonio Zoo. The hippo stands asleep in the water with just its nostrils above the surface, its mouth open, with colorful little fish enthusiastically exploring the hippo’s teeth, tongue, and gums. The fish enjoy yummy algae and food particles while the hippo enjoys good dental hygiene.
Reciprocity also exists within species themselves. Consider cooperative hunting. Lions or wolves are limited in the prey they can catch on their own. However, when they work together, they can be more successful to catch larger prey, contributing to the prosperity of their packs and prides.
Reciprocity is an ancient concept that has helped to inform the earliest civilizations. The Code of Hammurabi, ostensibly written by King Hammurabi of the First Dynasty of Babylon around 1750 BC, is known for exemplifying the “eye for an eye” principle.
One of its laws says, if a man puts out the eye of another, his eye shall be put out. Another says, if a man breaks a hole in another man’s house to steal his possessions, he shall be put to death in front of the hole. Yet another says, if fire breaks out in a man’s house and another man steals the homeowner’s property while endeavoring to put out the fire, that man shall be thrown into the self-same fire. Hammurabi didn’t mess around when it came to matters of theft. For the Babylonians, theft was a capital offense.
In contemporary times, reciprocity is the glue that holds together principal-agent relationships, as when one party hires another party to carry out specific tasks. If you want to start a company, for instance, you may hire a lawyer to draft and file the articles of incorporation. You, as the principal of the company, hire the attorney to act as an agent on your behalf. You receive the benefits of legal services, and your lawyer receives a commission for her services. You may repeat a similar arrangement with your accountant, your website designer, and any number of other professionals needed to help run your business. In each case, the parties enjoy mutual benefit.
The concept of mutuality is key. Both parties contribute something of value and receive something of value in return. Flowers provide pollen and bees repay them with their fertility services. Entrepreneurs provide paychecks to lawyers, and lawyers repay them by birthing new corporate entities, perhaps a different type of fertility service.
If only one side benefited, the relationship would be lopsided or, in extreme cases, predatory. Going back to the pack of wolves, reciprocity exists among the wolves, not between the wolves and their prey. Wolves need food, such as the deer in the open field. The deer needs nothing from the wolves except to be left alone. That relationship is not reciprocal. The relationship between wolves and deer is unilateral. The wolves say to the deer, “Stop running,” and the deer says to the wolves, “I’ll stop running when you stop chasing me.” The episode will end with either the wolves catching the deer or the deer escaping, at least for the time being. The relationship is unidirectional, not bi-directional.
Reciprocal relationships also have an element of interdependence. Each party needs the other party to maintain their side of the bargain. If one party withdraws, the collective benefits collapse. If the bees don’t show up, the flowers don’t reproduce. Or, if the bees show up and there are no flowers, they have to find pollen elsewhere for their honey.
In the principal-agent relationship, the business owner needs the expertise of agent professionals in order to launch and run the business. Without them, the business might not get off the ground or, if it does, it might not survive. By the same token, the agents need principals to hire them for their services. If the principals go out of business, the agents also suffer. They need each other. They are interdependent.
Another characteristic of reciprocal relationships is specificity. Each party brings the exact something that the other party needs. That is why the relationship works. If either party didn’t possess that certain something that the other party needed, the relationship wouldn’t work.
Consider again the entrepreneur who wants to file articles of incorporation to get her business off the ground. She needs a lawyer with knowledge and experience related to the formation of a company. The entrepreneur might be approached by other skilled individuals offering to help her with her business, but if they didn’t bring the specific legal skills necessary, the relationship would be fruitless. Imagine a shoemaker, for instance, who says, “I hear you want to start a business. I can help. You need shoes. I can make them for you.” The entrepreneur says, “I don’t need a shoemaker, I need a lawyer. Can you file articles of incorporation for my company?” The shoemaker says no. Conversation over. Specificity of contribution is a necessary element of the reciprocal relationship.
In the context of singular links, where a combination propagates an outcome that has greater scope or scale, reciprocal relationships also enjoy another characteristic. That characteristic is synergy, where the interaction produces a result that is greater than the sum of their individual parts. Each party catalyzes an aspect of the other party.
If you have ever used epoxy glue, you have seen synergy in action. Off-the-shelf epoxy includes two parts: the resin and the hardener. When separate, they are each stable and more or less inert, able to sit on the shelf for years waiting for you to come along and mix them together. Then, when you do come along and mix them together, you trigger a chemical reaction that causes the compound to cure, harden, and create a strong chemical bond.
Synergy speaks to a dynamic where the combined effort is greater than the effectiveness of its individual parts. Synergy creates the effects of gearing or leverage. Synergistic relationships are not linear, they are super-linear. They are not additive, they are multiplicative. Synergy plays a critical role in evolutionary biology and the formation of complex systems.
To generalize, then, reciprocal relationships display the characteristics of mutuality, interdependence, and specificity. In addition, some reciprocal relationships also display the characteristic of synergy. Those are the relationships that have the potential to be singular links, whose unique combination creates greater scale.
King Hammurabi of ancient Babylon created a list of rules based on reciprocity. By gathering that list into a consolidated Code, he was able to create the basis for something much larger: a justice system. Although it is just a simple list, it helped to govern and regulate the complex interactions of society. It also serves to demonstrate the power of reciprocity.