Flat organization

Abstract: Organizations performing non-routine, innovative, often knowledge- intensive tasks - for example professional partnerships - need a rather flat, collegial, and non - bureaucratic structure This book examines cooperation among partners in a US corporate law firm and provides a grounded theory of collective action among rival peers, or collegiality It is first network study of such a frim Members (partners and associates) are portrayed as independent entrepreneurs who build social niches in their organization and cultivate status competition among themselves This behaviour allows them to fulfil their commitment to an extremely constraining partnership agreement and generates informal social mechanisms (bounded solidarity, lateral control, oligarchic regualtion) that help a flat organization govern itself: maintain individual performance, even for tenured partners; capitalize knowledge and control quality; monitor and sanction opportunistic free-riding; solve the 'too many chefs' problem; balance the powers of rainmakers and schedulers; and integrate the firm in spite of many centrifugal forces These mechanisms and the solutions they provide are examined using a broadly-conceived structural approach combining theory-driven network analysis, ethnography of task forces performing knowledge-intensive work, and analysis of management and internal politics in the firm Emmanuel Lazega presents a theory of the collegial organization which generalizes its results to all kinds of partnerships, larger multinational professional services firms, and collegial pockets in flattening bureaucracies alike

Abstract: Recent popular and theoretical literature emphasizes the significance of communication technology for collaboration and information sharing across organizational boundaries. We hypothesize that due to the collaborative nature of their work and the way they are organized in work groups, technical employees, as compared with administrative employees, will communicate laterally, and will use the telephone and email for this purpose. We studied technical and administrative employees in seven departments of a large telecommunications firm. From logs of communication over two days, we examined vertical and lateral communication inside and outside the chain of command and department, and the use of telephone, email, and voice mail for this communication. Technical employees did have more lateral communication than administrators did, but all lateral communication not just that of technical employees tended to be by telephone. Over 50% of employees' communication was extradepartmental; extradepartmental communication, like lateral communication, tended to be by telephone. When employees used asynchronous technology, technical employees used email whereas administrators, especially those at high levels, used voice. Differential boundary-crossing by technical and administrative employees could be explained in part by the flatter structure of the technical work groups. Our results are consistent with Powell Powell, W. W. 1990. Neither market nor hierarchy: Network forms of organization. Res. Organ. Behavior12295--336., Barley Barley, S. 1994. The turn to a horizontal division of labor: On the occupationalization of firms and the technization of work. National Center for the Educational Quality of the Workforce, University of Pennsylvania, available from author. and others who have argued that the rise of technical work and the horizontal organization of technical workers increases collaboration and nonhierarchical communication. Organizations can encourage communication flows across organizational boundaries by strengthening horizontal structures for technical workers, especially and supporting old and new technology use by all employees.

Abstract: An ever more demanding competitive environment requires ever higher levels of corporate performance The trouble is that needed performance improvements often remain stubbornly out of reach for companies organized in the traditional "vertical" fashion: hierarchically-structured, functionally-oriented By contrast, there is real performance leverage in moving toward a flatter, more horizontal mode of organization, in which cross-functional, end-to-end work flows link internal processes with the needs and capabilities of both suppliers and customers The practical question, of course, is how to build such organizations From the experience of many of the pioneering companies that have, at least in part, gone horizontal, this article distills the key design principles on which this alternative mode of organization depends THE SENIOR MANAGERS at Technocom knew their organization no longer made any sense Post-Cold War military spending was dropping fast, and the government was scrutinizing product and service quality more closely than ever before Moreover, the company's commercial customers were reeling from intense competition and a poor economic climate The problems ran so deep, in fact, that the top group agreed to discuss them only among themselves in a series of sessions devoted to redesigning the company Many months into this top-secret effort, however, after endless debates over whether to centralize or decentralize and whether to organize SBUs around products or markets, they'd gotten nowhere Everyone agreed how the new company had to act -- customer-driven, total quality-focused, empowered workforce, continuous improvement But no one could generate a credible picture of what Technocom's version of such a company would look like or of how it would work in detail Many top managers share the anxieties -- and the frustrations -- of these executives Asking traditional organization questions does not produce convincing answers to their most pressing performance challenge: how to build customer-driven companies that continuously improve and innovate But neither does looking for practical guidance from the many "organization of the future" design approaches that urge today's companies to become "networked," "clustered," "self-directed," "orchestra-like," and "flat and flexible" The terms may be suggestive, but no one really knows as yet how to translate such aspirations into actionable designs Indeed, practitioners who have tried know that these approaches raise many more questions than they answer Who goes where in these organizations? What do they do? After delayering, what's left? What's the role of hierarchy? At the level of the individual work unit, some pieces of the puzzle are clear Self-managing teams, for example, do make a lot of sense What's missing, however, is a comprehensive understanding of what the whole company will look like when it's over -- and of the design principles on which such a picture must necessarily be based From the vertical With traditional vertical organizations, the picture is already in focus They divide work into functions, then departments, then tasks The primary building block of performance is the individual and his or her job; the chain of command goes up the functional ladder; and the manager's job is to match the right individuals with the right tasks and then to measure, evaluate, control, and reward their performance When things go awry, managers can turn to a familiar repertoire of design-related considerations: * Whether to organize by product, customer, or geography * Which functional resources to centralize or decentralize * Which committees and/or forums to use to integrate across functions or units * How to optimize the roles of line versus staff * How many levels and what spans of control to use to coordinate tasks and departments * How to align individual roles, responsibilities, and accountabilities with functional and/or organization-wide performance objectives …