![]() This reaction is not surprising in light of our findings: Since hierarchy is deeply engrained in people’s cognitive representation of leadership, employees are likely to experience hierarchy-free organisations as thoroughly destabilising. An example of such a situation in action, Carnabuci says, was the now-infamous case of Zappos, which attempted to introduce holacracy:Ĭontrary to management’s expectations, these moves created a great deal of dismay and led huge numbers of employees to leave the company. When it comes to leadership, people assume hierarchy, even when there is none and, given enough time, this causes hierarchies to emerge and solidify.Īs a result of this dynamic, most employees experience non-hierarchical leadership structures as “inherently inconsistent” and are uncomfortable with them. One such schema called ‘linear ordering’ means that we automatically look for leaders and followers, even in groups that are designed to be hierarchy-free. ![]() Professor Gianluca Carnabuci explains that we all make implicit assumptions when interpreting the world around us, which are known as cognitive schemas. For example, research by the European School of Management and Technology in Berlin, which was published in Organization Science towards the end of last year, revealed the reason why many companies struggle to go down this route is that the concept of hierarchy is hard-wired into our brains. Another for many companies is to ensure cost-efficiencies by simply employing fewer managers.īut while such notions may seem appealing, there appears to have been a bit of an academic backlash against them lately. ![]() One aim is to empower individual workers to be creative and innovative in a way that traditional command-and-control management approaches never could. ![]() The current orthodoxy is that progressive employers, particularly in the digital start-up arena, are all moving towards creating corporate cultures based on flat hierarchies and collaborative networks of teams. ![]()
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