Is less hierarchy an idea whose time has come – and gone?
Executive Summary
Flat management was supposed to represent the future of enlightened business organization. Proponents touted the concept of reducing layers of management and empowering employees to make decisions as a quick path to making companies more efficient and Millennial-friendly. But a growing chorus of critics is condemning flat management as overhyped and fraught with its own set of problems, including uncertainty about employee roles, difficulties with scale and lack of accountability. Other business scholars say the trend toward less hierarchy is here to stay and caution companies against giving up on it too soon.
A few key takeaways:
Flat management seems to work best in smaller companies or in discrete units of larger ones.
Estimates of organizations using a flat-management system in whole or in part range from a few hundred to almost 1,000 worldwide.
Online shoe retailer Zappos, the largest organization to turn to flat management, has stayed with the approach even though some 18 percent of its employees left when it implemented the system.
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Resources for Further Study
Bibliography
Books
Goodman, Malcolm, and Sandra M. Dingli, “Creativity and Strategic Innovation Management: Directions for Future Value in Changing Times,” Taylor & Francis, 2017. Two academics offer an updated primer on the latest in management thought.
Groth, Aimee, “The Kingdom of Happiness: Inside Tony Hseih’s Zapponian Utopia,” Touchstone, 2017. A journalist tells the story behind online shoe retailer Zappos, CEO Tony Hseih and the turbulent quest for self-management.
Kirkpatrick, Doug, “Beyond Empowerment: The Age of the Self-Managed Organization,” Jetlaunch, 2017. A consultant who worked at one of the earliest self-managed companies details why 20 years of empowerment programs have so often failed to give employees power, and what companies must do to make such efforts work.
Pontefract, Dan, “Flat Army: Creating a Connected and Engaged Organization,” Elevate Publishing, 2016. A management consultant provides tips on how to overcome resistance when trying to flatten an organization.
Shaw, Robert Bruce, “Extreme Teams: Why Pixar, Netflix, Airbnb, and Other Cutting-Edge Companies Succeed Where Most Fail,” American Management Association, 2017. A leadership expert offers an insider’s look at how teams work in some of the most successful companies.
Articles
Bernstein, Ethan, et al., “Beyond the Holacracy Hype,” Harvard Business Review, July–August 2016, http://tinyurl.com/
Giang, Vivian, “What Kind of Leadership Is Needed In Flat Hierarchies?” Fast Company, May 19, 2015, https://tinyurl.com/
Luzajic, Tamara, “What Is Holocracy And Is It Destroying Companies?” Customer Experience Magazine, Jan. 10, 2017, http://tinyurl.com/
Michelman, Paul, “Leading to Become Obsolete: Haier CEO Zhang Ruimin is transforming a manufacturing giant into a platform for entrepreneurship –and his employees into self-governing entreprenuers,” MIT Sloan Management Review, Fall 2017, https://tinyurl.com/
Mukherjee, Amit S., “The Case Against Agility,” MIT Sloan Management Review, Sept. 26, 2017, http://tinyurl.com/
Romme, Georges, “The big misconceptions holding holacracy back,” Harvard Business Review, September 2015, http://tinyurl.com/
Useem, Jerry, “Are Bosses Necessary?” The Atlantic, October 2015, https://tinyurl.com/
Reports and Studies
Balls, Andrew, “The Flattening of Corporate Management,” NBER Digest, Oct. 6, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/
Claudino, Tiago Bomfim, et al., “Fostering and limiting factors of innovation in Micro and Small Enterprises,” Innovation in Management Review, April–June 2017, http://tinyurl.com/
Pfau, Bruce N., “What Do Millennials Really Want at Work? The Same Thing the Rest of Us Do,” Harvard Business Review, April 7, 2016, http://tinyurl.com/
Roelofsen, Erik, and Tao Yue, “Case Study: Is Holacracy for Us?” Harvard Business Review, March–April 2017, https://tinyurl.com/
Romme, Georges, “Management as a science-based profession: a grand societal challenge,” Management Research Review, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/
Walsh, Dylan, “Rethinking Hierarchy in the Workplace,” Insights by Stanford Business, Sept. 5, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/
Zitek, Emily, and Alex Jordan, “Research: Narcissists Don’t Like Flat Organizations,” Harvard Business Review, July 27, 2016, http://tinyurl.com/
The Next Step
Experiments
Aileron, “Small Business, Big Opportunity: Replacing Traditional Management With Holacracy,” Forbes, Oct. 9, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/
Hinssen, Peter, “Why Your Organization Needs To Put Culture Before Structure,” Forbes, June 12, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/
Kessler, Sarah, “GE has a version of self-management that is much like Zappos’ Holacracy–and it works,” Quartz, June 6, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/
Silicon Valley
Agarwal, Ajay, “How To Effectively Grow An Early Stage Business,” Forbes, May 26, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/
Edwards, Jim, “Secrecy, Control and ‘Kindness’: What the Snapchat IPO tells us about its corporate culture,” Business Insider, Feb. 3, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/
Mucklai, Shazir, “Why Startups Need Project Managers Now More Than Ever,” Forbes, April 12, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/
Organizations
Agile Alliance
1101 N.E. Paren Springs Road, Dundee, OR 97115
1-503-554-8230
http://agilealliance.org
International organization that promotes agile software development and the use of collaborative, cross-functional teams.
American Management Association
3118 28th Parkway, Temple Hills, MD 20748
1-212-586-8100
http://www.amanet.org/
Trade association for management training.
HolacracyOne
1741 Hilltop Road, Suite 200, Spring City, PA 19475
1-484-359-8922
http://www.holacracy.org
The company that developed Brian Robertson’s self-management theory of Holacracy.
How Metrics
745 Fifth Ave., 8th Floor, New York, NY 10051
1-866-439-3071
http://howmetrics.lrn.com/
Publisher of the How Report, which measures the ways self-governing organizations produce better business outcomes.
Institute for Business Innovation
F402 Haas School of Business, #1930, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-1930
1-510-642-4041
http://businessinnovation.berkeley.edu/
Berkeley Haas Business School research arm that studies innovation at startups and established companies.
Morning Star Self-Management Institute
500 Capitol Mall, Suite 2050, Sacramento, CA 95816
1-916-628-6500
www.self-managementinstitute.org/
Research and education organization that supports management model based on the tomato processing company Morning Star.
Scrum Alliance
7401 Church Ranch Blvd., #210, Westminster, CO 80021
1-720-443-7314
www.scrumalliance.org
Nonprofit organization that supports an “agile” workplace.
DOI: 10.1177/237455680331.n1