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Sub-theme 55: Organizing beyond Hierarchy?

Convenors:
Johan Alvehus
Lund University, Sweden
Perttu Salovaara
Helsinki University, Finland
Nela Smolović Jones
The Open University, United Kingdom

Call for Papers

The history of organizations and organization theory is ripe with ideas of non-hierarchical forms of organizing. Heralded by changes in social values, efficiency concerns, and technology, a plethora of concepts have been launched over the years: networks, spaghetti, flat, leaderless, self-organization, and so on. In the early Internet era a wave of popular management gurus launched critique against bureaucracy and hierarchy, and proposed new concepts (see, e.g., Galagan, 1992; Handy, 1991). Contemporary examples include Dutch Buurtzorg's self-managed nursing teams, Mercedes-Benz’s flexibility-supporting holacracy, and the US-based Morning Star factory's collegial way of agreeing on the division of work and responsibilities and mediating conflicts.
 
Arguments for organizing beyond hierarchy exists also outside the popular management discourse. Several authors have noted that Robert Michels ‘iron law of oligarchy’ might be mitigated or subverted by for example institutional arrangements (Diefenbach, 2019) and that elite control is not unavoidable (Landemore & Ferreras, 2016; Pek, 2021); anthropologists have pointed towards numerous and diverse practices that enable egalitarian systems and leadership (Gibson & Sillander, 2011; Graeber & Wengrow, 2021), and leadership scholars have recently pointed towards more collective and distributed forms of leadership (Raelin, 2011; Ospina et al., 2020; Sveiby, 2011). Salovaara, Vuori & Collinson (in review) have suggested the term community-based organizing to capture current trends in organizing beyond hierarchy.
 
Moreover, alternative forms of organizing in contexts outside formal bureaucracies are regularly highlighted as examples of new possibilities, challenging traditional hierarchies. Three categories of research concerned with less-hierarchical organizing have been identified: post-bureaucratic organizations, humanistic management and organizational democracy (Lee & Edmondson, 2017). Underlying these trends are values such as autonomy, democracy, and empowerment. Sometimes, we can see traces of these in traditional hierarchical contexts, for example in the industrial democracy movement or even in alternative governance forms such as professional partnerships (Greenwood et al, 1990; Smets et al., 2017).
 
Yet, as noted by some organization and leadership theorists, hierarchy and power differences seem to prevail (Alvehus, 2021; Pfeffer, 2013). Different mechanisms for this have been proposed, from the efficiency of routines in large-scale production, through the role of capitalist interests (Marglin, 1974), to socio-psychological mechanisms of power and status (Magee & Galinsky, 2013). Putting it briefly, when it comes to the possibilities of organizing beyond hierarchy, the jury’s still out. But, organizing beyond hierarchy is not necessarily limited to the studies of proclaimed absence of hierarchy, but can also include studies of democratic or counter-hierarchical arrangements, and resistance within formal organizations. Perhaps we are witnessing the development of a crossroads between (old) ideas of organization and (old) ideas of social justice/democratic societies – or perhaps we are witnessing another popular management discourse that obscures underlying power relationships.
 
Democracy in particular, although often misappraised rhetorically, can potentially offer organizations great value through challenging taken for granted identities, structures and assumptions. For example, democratic practice can challenge hierarchies within hierarchies – such as those that privilege people according to gender, race, class, ability, age and sexuality. Democracy is an inherently dangerous practice that foregrounds conflict and invites people to reach beyond rhetoric to enact equality in practice (Smolović Jones et al, 2016). Conflict can generate radical practices that shakes up a status quo and builds solidarity between previously disparate groups (Smolović Jones et al, 2021). If case studies we can learn from in the present are lacking, it is possible to challenge this state of affairs through expanding the spatio-temporal focus of research. In addition to learning from examples in the Global South and under-privileged Global North, we could learn much through a more sustained examination of successful democratic interventions in the past.
 
Sometimes, a democratic intervention can be targeted at dismantling and terminating organizations if they are deemed too harmful or corrupt to continue – through acts of democratic but dissensual leadership (Barthold et al, 2022), or subtler tactics of internal subversion (Smolović Jones, 2022). A challenge to organization studies might therefore be to consider how certain problematic organizations at the top of the global economic hierarchy (e.g. those of fossil capital) are more effectively undermined or even dissolved to save the planet from climate and other pressing crises.
 
This sub-theme seeks to explore ideas about organizing beyond hierarchy, thereby aiming to explore the possibilities and limitations of new forms of organizing. Lacking at present, however, are sufficient a) conceptual contributions that dwell in detail on what theories of democratic practice can offer understandings of (non-)hierarchical organization; b) empirical examples of different forms of democratic practice working effectively and flattening hierarchies in a number of different settings, historical and contemporary. We welcome contributions in both of these areas. We are interested in, but not limited to, papers addressing topics such as:

  • Empirical accounts of organizing in post-hierarchical organizations

  • Open strategy and inclusive decision making-processes

  • Considerations of the past, present and future of organizational democracy, drawing on theories of democratic practice and/or rich empirical cases

  • Interrogation of management concepts such as leaderless, self-leadership, teal, sociocracy, holacracy, flat, spaghetti, network, self-managing (and so on) organizations

  • Problematizing hierarchy/non-hierarchical organizations, practices and routines

  • Leadership practice (s) in non-hierarchical organizations

  • AI and algorithms as substitutes for leadership

  • Collectives, and employee-owned and partnership-based organizations

 

References

  • Alvehus, J. (2021): Docility, obedience and discipline: Towards dirtier leadership studies. Journal of Change Management, 21 (1), 120–132.
  • Barthold, C., Checchi, M., Imas, M., & Smolović Jones, O. (2022): Dissensual leadership: Rethinking democratic leadership with Jacques Rancière. Organization, 29 (4), 673-691.
  • Diefenbach, T. (2019): Why Michels’ “iron law of oligarchy” is not an iron law – And how democratic organisations can stay “oligarchy-free.” Organization Studies, 40, 545-562.
  • Galagan, P. A. & Donovan, M. (1992): Beyond hierarchy: The search for high performance. Training and Development, 46 (8), 20–25.
  • Greenwood, R., Hinings, C. R., & Brown, J. (1990): "P2-form" strategic management: Corporate practices in professional partnerships. The Academy of Management Journal, 33 (4), 725-755.
  • Hale, R & Whitlam, P. (1997): Towards the Virtual Organization. London: McGraw-Hill.
  • Handy, C. (1991): The Age of Unreason. London: Arrow Business Books.
  • Landemore, H., & Ferreras, I. (2016): In defense of workplace democracy: Towards a justification of the firm–state analogy. Political Theory, 44 (1), 53-81.
  • Magee, J. C., & Galinsky, A. D. (2008): Social hierarchy: The self-reinforcing nature of power and status. The Academy of Management Annals, 2 (1), 351–398.
  • Marglin, S. A. (1974): What do bosses do? The origins and functions of hierarchy in capitalist production. Review of Radical Political Economics, 6 (2), 60-112.
  • Ospina, S. M., Foldy, E. G., Fairhurst, G. T., & Jackson, B. (2020): Collective dimensions of leadership: Connecting theory and method. Human Relations, 73 (4), 441–463.
  • Pek, S. (2021): Drawing Out Democracy: The Role of Sortition in Preventing and Overcoming Organizational Degeneration in Worker-Owned Firms. Journal of Management Inquiry, 30 (2), 193–206.
  • Pfeffer, J. (2013): You're still the same: Why theories of power hold over time and across contexts. Academy of Management Perspectives, 27 (4), 269-280.
  • Raelin, J. (2011): From leadership-as-practice to leaderful practice. Leadership, 7 (2), 195-211.
  • Salovaara, P., Vuori, J. & Colinson, D. (in review) Organizing beyond hierarchy: democratic practices and community-driven organizing.
  • Smets, M., Morris, T., von Nordenflycht, A., & Brock, D. M. (2017): 25 years since ‘P2’: Taking stock and charting the future of professional firms. Journal of Professions and Organization, 4, 91–111.
  • Smolović Jones, S. (2022): Gaslighting and dispelling: Experiences of non-governmental organization workers in navigating gendered corruption. Human Relations, 00187267221083274.
  • Smolović Jones, S., Smolović Jones, O., Winchester, N., & Grint, K. (2016): Putting the discourse to work: On outlining a praxis of democratic leadership development. Management Learning, 47 (4), 424-442.
  • Smolović Jones, S., Winchester, N., & Clarke, C. (2021): Feminist solidarity building as embodied agonism: An ethnographic account of a protest movement. Gender, Work & Organization, 28 (3), 917-934.
  • Sveiby, K.-E. (2011): Collective leadership with power symmetry: Lessons from Aboriginal prehistory. Leadership, 7 (4), 385-414.
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Johan Alvehus is Professor at the Department of Service Studies at Lund University, Sweden. His research centres on organizing and management in and of professional service organizations from leadership and institutional logics perspectives. He has studied public and private sector organizations, from Big Four accounting firms to IT consultants, schools and hospitals. Johan’s work has been published in ‘Organization Studies’, ‘Organization Theory’, ‘Human Resource Management Journal’, ‘Journal of Professions and Organizations’, and ‘Leadership’, among others. He also writes on methodology and academic writing. His most recent book is T”he Logic of Professionalism” (Bristol University Press).
Perttu Salovaara is an Associate Professor of Helsinki University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Finland, and works as an organization consultant developing self-managing organizations. He has published over 20 articles on leadership, self-managing organizations, leadership in space and place, qualitative video methodology, and philosophy in management. His current research focuses on collaborative practices taking over traditional managerial functions in self-managing organizations, collective forms of leadership, and informal networks created between Finnish craft breweries. Perttu’s work has been published in ‘Leadership’, ‘Journal of Management Inquiry’, ‘Organization’, S’candinavian Journal of Management’, ‘Project Management Journal’, ‘Philosophy of Management,’ and in a number of edited books.
Nela Smolović Jones is Director of Gendered Organisational Practice research cluster at the Open University, United Kingdom, where she is also a Senior Lecturer in Organisation Studies, and is Associate Editor of the journal ‘Gender, Work and Organizatio’n. Her research focuses on advancing gender equality within organizations and society. She studies how feminist solidarity and democratic forms of organizing are achieved in practice. Nela is also interested in the experiences of women in precarious work and how they organize against this. Her work has been published in journals such as ‘Human Relations’, ‘Work, Employment & Society’, ‘Organization Studies’, ‘Organization’, and ‘Management Learning’.