In this blog we have made the case on how the Fourth Revolution (and its widespread availability of communication capability) will lead to a much flatter organization – and that it does scare many people (see the post “What is so Awful About the Disappearance of Hierarchy?“). There is currently considerable debate about the need for hierarchy, like for example in this recent Stanford Business School article, ‘The Case for Workplace Hierarchy‘.
One of the points of the paper is that “power structures haven’t changed much over time, […] the way organizations operate today actually reflects hundreds of years of hierarchical power structures, and remains unchanged because these structures ‘can be linked to survival advantages’ in the workplace“. Also, “hierarchies deliver practical and psychological value, in part by fulfilling deep-seated needs for order and security“.
Hierarchy would then be justified by deep psychological needs to recognize effectively and visibly a power structure that would help people orient themselves.
There is no doubt that societies or groups or people do tend to organize themselves around a spoken or unspoken power balance and that hierarchy has the benefit of making power and status immediately visible. It is very possible that most of us do need some kind of social hierarchy to fit in, as a deep-seated psychological need. Still there are other ways to show visibly power or importance, and these ways are being used or developed by social networks today (recognition of top contributors, peer ratings, Klout score etc.). They are not mature yet and this is an area of interesting and controversial development.
What I take from this debate is clearly that flatter or no hierarchy is only possible if there is a clear way to visibility show some kind of status in the organization, and that successful companies that implement new ways of organizing themselves need to address this psychological need. What do you think?
