Self-managing organization (less-hierarchical forms)

Authority is decentralized formally and throughout the organization, so roles and explicit rules replace the reporting relationship of manager and subordinate.

What it is

A self-managing organization takes the manager-subordinate reporting relationship out of the formal structure. Lee and Edmondson (2017), a review of the literature, define it as one that radically decentralizes authority in a formal and systematic way throughout the organization. People hold roles, often several; teams, circles, or negotiated agreements group the work; written rules say who decides what; and role holders coordinate among themselves.

Adjust to each other directlyMMutual adjustment

Select a unit or a letter to read it. M, mutual adjustment: People coordinate their own work by informal communication with each other.Role. Layer: Roles and teams. No single head above it. Roles in a circle. People hold roles, often several, in place of positions, and written rules say what each role decides (Robertson 2015). At Zappos the role is the primary organizing unit (Lee and Edmondson 2017).Role. Layer: Roles and teams. No single head above it. Roles in a circle. Perhaps held by the same person as the other role in the circle; reading a circle of roles as grouped by the work done is our judgment.Project team. Layer: Roles and teams. No single head above it. By project. At Valve the project team is the primary organizing unit (Lee and Edmondson 2017), in a company that by its own handbook has no managers (Puranam and Håkonsson 2015); reading a project team as grouped by product or purpose is our judgment.Colleague. Layer: Roles and teams. No single head above it. At Morning Star each colleague negotiates responsibilities with peers in a yearly letter of understanding, in place of a boss (Hamel 2011).Colleague. Layer: Roles and teams. No single head above it. The colleague on the other side of the letter: the agreement between the two, not a reporting line, sets who does what.M, mutual adjustment. People coordinate their own work by informal communication with each other.

The structure in words

1. Roles and teams
   • Role, no single head above it, grouped roles in a circle. People hold roles, often several, in place of positions, and written rules say what each role decides (Robertson 2015). At Zappos the role is the primary organizing unit (Lee and Edmondson 2017).
   • Role, no single head above it, grouped roles in a circle. Perhaps held by the same person as the other role in the circle; reading a circle of roles as grouped by the work done is our judgment.
   • Project team, no single head above it, grouped by project. At Valve the project team is the primary organizing unit (Lee and Edmondson 2017), in a company that by its own handbook has no managers (Puranam and Håkonsson 2015); reading a project team as grouped by product or purpose is our judgment.
   • Colleague, no single head above it. At Morning Star each colleague negotiates responsibilities with peers in a yearly letter of understanding, in place of a boss (Hamel 2011).
   • Colleague, no single head above it. The colleague on the other side of the letter: the agreement between the two, not a reporting line, sets who does what.

• Role and Role: adjust to each other directly.
• Colleague and Colleague: adjust to each other directly.
• Roles in a circle: coordinated by mutual adjustment.

People hold roles, often several, written rules say who decides what, and role holders coordinate among themselves. What groups the work differs by design: the role at Zappos, the project team at Valve, and the negotiated agreement between colleagues at Morning Star (Lee and Edmondson 2017).

Source: Lee and Edmondson 2017, a review of the literature; Robertson 2015; Puranam and Håkonsson 2015, one case description; Hamel 2011.

Its profile:

• Grouping: spans function or process and product or purpose, our judgment: the primary unit differs among designs (Lee and Edmondson).
• Specialization: medium, our judgment: several roles each.
• Formalization: medium, our judgment: the design formalizes who holds authority, not how the work is done.
• Centralization: decentralized, on Lee and Edmondson's theory, and contested: a second view reads the middle band from four studies of single organizations (Lee 2024; Maurer, Bach, and Oertel 2023; Foss 2003; Burton and colleagues 2017).
• Layers and span: flat, from evidence: Buurtzorg runs without supervisors or middle management (Martela and Nandram 2025, one case description).
• Decision rights: selective vertical and horizontal decentralization, theory: execution is most often decentralized, firm strategy least (Lee and Edmondson).
• Coordinating mechanism: mutual adjustment, our judgment, inside rules that set accountabilities, not the content of the work.
• Lateral mechanisms: task forces and teams, our judgment.
• Differentiation against integration: moderate, with some integrating roles, our judgment.
• Mode of exchange: market, theory, and contested. Zenger (2015), a commentary on one company, reads Valve as composed internal markets, and Morning Star's colleagues negotiate their responsibilities in yearly letters of understanding (Hamel 2011). The second view, clan, rests on Barker (1993), one ethnographic case study of value-based team rules, and Marchetti and Puranam (2026), a correlational study of 23,000 ordinary firms, none studied as self-managing, in which strong culture appeared to substitute for hierarchy.
• Boundary permeability: selective, our judgment: the boundaries between levels go, while membership is still selected.

Basis of groupingJudgmentFunction or processProduct or purposeClient or market segmentPlaceTwo or more at onceSpecializationJudgmentLowMediumHighStandardization and formalizationJudgmentLowMediumHighCentralizationContestedTheoryCentralizedMixedDecentralizedLayers and span of controlEvidenceFlatModerateTallDecision rights and the locus of authorityTheoryVertical and horizontal centralizationLimited horizontal decentralizationLimited vertical decentralizationSelective vertical and horizontal decentralizationVertical and horizontal decentralizationPrime coordinating mechanismJudgmentMutual adjustmentDirect supervisionStandardization of work processesStandardization of outputsStandardization of skillsStandardization of normsLateral mechanismsJudgmentHierarchy, rules, and goals onlyDirect contact and liaison rolesTask forces and teamsIntegrating roles and managerial linking rolesMatrixDifferentiation against integrationJudgmentLow differentiation, light integrationModerate differentiation, some integrating rolesHigh differentiation, heavy integrationMode of exchange and controlContestedTheoryMarketBureaucracyClanBoundary permeabilityJudgmentClosedSelectivePermeable

Basis of groupingJudgmentFunction or process and product or purposeSpecializationJudgmentMediumStandardization and formalizationJudgmentMediumCentralizationContestedTheoryDecentralizedLayers and span of controlEvidenceFlatDecision rights and the locus of authorityTheorySelective vertical and horizontal decentralizationPrime coordinating mechanismJudgmentMutual adjustmentLateral mechanismsJudgmentTask forces and teamsDifferentiation against integrationJudgmentModerate differentiation, some integrating rolesMode of exchange and controlContestedTheoryMarketBoundary permeabilityJudgmentSelective

Select a dimension to read why the form sits there, and on what basis.Basis of grouping: Function or process and product or purpose. Basis: Judgment. Lee and Edmondson find the primary organizing unit differs among self-managing designs, the role at Zappos, the bilateral contract at Morning Star, and the project team at Valve; the form sets no single basis, so the span is judgment. Sources: Lee and Edmondson 2017.Specialization: Medium. Basis: Judgment. People hold several roles each; judgment for the band. Sources: Robertson 2015; Lee and Edmondson 2017.Standardization and formalization: Medium. Basis: Judgment. Authority is decentralized formally and systematically, which formalizes who holds authority rather than the procedures of the work; holacracy adds a written constitution, one variant's practice; the middle band is judgment. Sources: Lee and Edmondson 2017; Robertson 2015.Centralization: Decentralized. Basis: Theory. Self-managing organizations radically decentralize authority throughout the organization. Sources: Lee and Edmondson 2017; Lee 2024; Maurer and colleagues 2023; Foss 2003; Burton and colleagues 2017. View 2: Mixed. In practice decentralized authority had to be enacted continually through demanding practices that were hard to sustain; after a move to self-management, former high-ranking employees stayed more central; at Oticon managers meddled with delegated rights and the design gave way to a matrix; and GitHub abandoned its boss-less design; the middle band is a reading of these studies. Sources: Lee 2024; Maurer and colleagues 2023; Foss 2003; Burton and colleagues 2017.Layers and span of control: Flat. Basis: Evidence. Buurtzorg runs without supervisors or middle management, with a small team of coaches and purpose-built information systems. Sources: Martela and Nandram 2025; Lee and Edmondson 2017.Decision rights and the locus of authority: Selective vertical and horizontal decentralization. Basis: Theory. Different decisions go to different places: reading Valve, Morning Star, and Zappos, Lee and Edmondson find work execution the domain most likely to be decentralized and firm strategy the least. Sources: Lee and Edmondson 2017.Prime coordinating mechanism: Mutual adjustment. Basis: Judgment. Mutual adjustment among role holders, framed by explicit rules and role definitions that set accountabilities and decision rights rather than the content of the work; no work places the form on the scale, so this is judgment. Sources: Lee and Edmondson 2017; Robertson 2015.Lateral mechanisms: Task forces and teams. Basis: Judgment. Circles and self-managing teams carry the coordination the manager once did; judgment for the band. Sources: Robertson 2015; Lee and Edmondson 2017.Differentiation against integration: Moderate differentiation, some integrating roles. Basis: Judgment. Teams and circles differ in task and are joined by rules and linking roles; judgment. Sources: Lee and Edmondson 2017; Lawrence and Lorsch 1967a.Mode of exchange and control: Market. Basis: Theory. Zenger reads one firm, Valve, as composed internal markets, and at Morning Star each colleague's responsibilities are negotiated with peers in a yearly letter of understanding; neither source places the other self-managing firms. Sources: Zenger 2015; Hamel 2011; Barker 1993; Marchetti and Puranam 2026. View 2: Clan. Peer control through shared values replaces the boss: a self-managing team's value-based rules controlled members more tightly than the bureaucracy before, and strong culture appeared to substitute for managerial hierarchy across firms. Sources: Barker 1993; Marchetti and Puranam 2026.Boundary permeability: Selective. Basis: Judgment. Internal boundaries between levels are removed while membership is still selected; judgment. Sources: Lee and Edmondson 2017; Ashkenas and colleagues 1995.

Three levels rest on theory, among them decentralized authority (Lee and Edmondson 2017), and flat layers rest on one case description of Buurtzorg (Martela and Nandram 2025). Two rows are contested: centralization, where a second view reads the middle band from four studies of single organizations, and mode of exchange, market or clan.

Source: Lee and Edmondson 2017, a review of the literature; Robertson 2015; Lee 2024, one ethnographic case study; Maurer and colleagues 2023, one case study; Foss 2003, one case study; Burton and colleagues 2017, one case description; Martela and Nandram 2025, one case description; Lawrence and Lorsch 1967a, a multi-firm comparative field study; Zenger 2015, a commentary on one company; Hamel 2011; Barker 1993, one ethnographic case study; Marchetti and Puranam 2026, a correlational study of 23,000 firms; Ashkenas and colleagues 1995.

Where it came from

Lee and Edmondson gave the form its scholarly definition in 2017. They judged earlier research on post-bureaucratic organizations, humanistic management, and organizational democracy unable to tell radical efforts from incremental ones. The question: whether, and how, an organization can work at scale without managerial hierarchy.

The forms by first year

Schools that treat this form: Human relations and System 4; Socio-technical systems; Organizational economics: decision rights, authority, and complementarities; Institutional theory; Scandinavian institutionalism; and the new-forms debate.

Select a school's row or a form's square to read it.Select a form's square to read it; open a school below.Bureaucracy and its critics1900s to 1950s, revived from the 1990sWhat it claimsWeber held that rational-legal authority exercised through an office hierarchy, written rules, trained officials, and promotion by qualification is technically superior in precision, speed, and reliability. Critics studied its unintended consequences, Michels's iron law sharpest.What it has shownMerton (1940) argued, with no test, that rules can turn from means into ends; case studies followed. The Aston group concluded that the type's dimensions vary independently, and Wagner's meta-analysis (2021) found that many of their interrelationships have weakened.Who disputes itHuman relations and System 4 sets the costs of impersonal rules to motivation and cooperation against the technical superiority Weber stresses.Bureaucracy and its critics in The Schools of Organization DesignClassical administration1910s to 1940s, and in German to the 1970sWhat it claimsThere are general principles of administration, among them division of work, unity of command, a scalar chain of authority, and a limited span of control, and a structure built to them will be efficient in most settings. Taylor added that planners should set work methods.What it has shownThe school offered reasoning and experience, not tests. Woodward (1965) found that the spans and levels of the more successful firms in her sample differed by production system, and Simon (1946) showed that the principles come in pairs that point in opposite directions.Who disputes itStructural contingency theory found that the structure of successful firms varies with technology and environment, where classical writers treat their principles as general.Classical administration in The Schools of Organization DesignHuman relations and System 41920s to 1960sWhat it claimsOutput depends on the social relations of work, the norms of informal groups, and the style of supervision as much as on formal design. Likert's System 4, overlapping work groups joined by linking-pin managers under participative management, outperforms authoritative systems.What it has shownThe founding evidence is the Hawthorne studies, which later reanalyses dispute (Carey 1967; Levitt and List 2011). Likert's support came largely from his own institute's surveys. Wagner (1994) found participation's effects on performance and satisfaction significant but small.Who disputes itLabor process and critical theory reads human relations as a technique of managerial control rather than a change in the distribution of power.Human relations and System 4 in The Schools of Organization DesignTransaction cost economics and the M-form hypothesis1937, then the 1970s to the presentWhat it claimsFirms exist, and are organized as they are, to economize on transaction costs. Hierarchy replaces the market when assets are specific, uncertainty is high, and exchange is frequent, and the multidivisional form should outperform the functional form in large, diversified firms.What it has shownArmour and Teece (1978) found, in United States petroleum firms from 1955 to 1973, a positive relationship between the multidivisional form and profitability while the form was spreading, but not once an equilibrium in organizational form was reached.Who disputes itThe network perspective on organizations: Granovetter argued that the theory undersocializes economic action, which is embedded in networks of personal relations that also produce trust and order.Transaction cost economics and the M-form hypothesis in The Schools of Organization DesignThe Carnegie school and the attention-based view1940s to the presentWhat it claimsPeople in organizations are boundedly rational, so structure matters because it sets the premises of their decisions and channels their attention: who sees which problems, which goals they pursue, and which routines they follow. Ocasio makes structure distribute attention.What it has shownMarch and Simon (1958) drew propositions from the existing literature, and Cyert and March (1963) added process models and simulations. Two studies show hierarchy shaping what is sent up as well as what is chosen (Reitzig and Maciejovsky 2015; Keum and See 2017).Who disputes itOrganizational economics: decision rights, authority, and complementarities models a principal and agents with defined objectives; the Carnegie school, firms as coalitions with unresolved goal conflict.The Carnegie school and the attention-based view in The Schools of Organization DesignSocio-technical systems1950s to 1980sWhat it claimsAn organization is a social system and a technical system that must be designed together. The same technology admits more than one way of organizing work, and groups that own a whole task and control its variances at the source perform better and are more satisfied.What it has shownTrist and Bamforth (1951) found that longwall mechanization broke up self-regulating work groups. A review of 134 experiments found them extremely successful overall, and Stewart (2006) linked team autonomy to performance; studies of socialist brigades and Volkswagen qualify it.Who disputes itLabor process and critical theory: Kelly argued that labor intensification, not joint optimization, accounts for what socio-technical redesign achieved, and that the part of pay incentives was seriously underestimated.Socio-technical systems in The Schools of Organization DesignThe economics of the labor-managed firm and of enterprise ownership1958 to the presentWhat it claimsA firm run by its workers behaves differently from one run for investors: Ward modeled the Yugoslav-style firm as maximizing income per worker. Hansmann argued that an ownership form's success depends on the balance between the costs of market contracting and of ownership.What it has shownBurdín (2014) found a 29 percent lower hazard of dissolution for Uruguayan worker-managed firms than for conventional ones, and Fakhfakh, Pérotin, and Gago (2012) found French labor-managed firms as productive or more so in every industry studied.Who disputes itOrganizational economics (Jensen and Meckling) contrasts the labor-managed firm, in which tradable residual claims are legally prohibited, with cooperatives and partnerships that arise out of voluntary contracting.The economics of the labor-managed firm and of enterprise ownership in The Schools of Organization DesignModularity and the mirroring hypothesis1960s to the presentWhat it claimsComplex systems are built of nearly decomposable parts, and an organization's structure tends to mirror the architecture of what it makes: modular products allow loosely coupled organizations, and tightly coupled products need tightly coupled teams. Conway's law runs in reverse.What it has shownColfer and Baldwin (2016) review the empirical studies and report both support and principled exceptions. Direct tests point both ways: MacCormack, Baldwin, and Rusnak (2012) found open source products more modular than their commercial pairs; dynamic components break the mirror.Who disputes itNo school in the record disputes it head on; it answers information processing, which meets the coordination load inside the organization; mirroring writers locate it in the product's architecture.Modularity and the mirroring hypothesis in The Schools of Organization DesignStrategy and structure1960s to 1980sWhat it claimsStructure follows strategy: firms that diversify by product or geography outgrow the centralized functional structure and, after a lag and usually a crisis, adopt divisions. Chandler drew this from the histories of DuPont, General Motors, Standard Oil of New Jersey, and Sears.What it has shownChandler (1962) is comparative business history of four firms set against a wider survey. Rumelt (1974) related diversification and structure to performance, and Egelhoff (1988), with 34 multinationals, found some of Stopford and Wells's relationships supported and others not.Who disputes itInstitutional theory: in Fligstein's model divisions spread with a product-related or unrelated strategy, presidents from sales or finance, and other firms in the industry changing; strategy was one of three.Strategy and structure in The Schools of Organization DesignStructural contingency theory1960s to the presentWhat it claimsThere is no one best structure. Performance depends on fit between structure and contingencies such as environment, technology, size, and strategy, on an open-system view of the organization. Drazin and Van de Ven separate fit as selection, interaction, and systems.What it has shownBurns and Stalker, Woodward, and the Aston group related structure to context; Drazin and Van de Ven (1985) supported selection and systems fit only. Pennings (1975) found that fit did not explain effectiveness; Schoonhoven (1981) found traditional hypotheses unsupported.Who disputes itStrategic choice: Child argued that contingency theory explains structure by the constraints of context and leaves out the political process by which power-holders choose strategic action, structural forms included.Structural contingency theory in The Schools of Organization DesignThe French bureaucratic school (strategic analysis)1960s to 1980sWhat it claimsA bureaucracy is a system of power relations organized around zones of uncertainty. Impersonal rules and centralization protect members from depending on one another, those who control uncertainties hold power, and, unable to correct its errors, it changes only through crisis.What it has shownLe phénomène bureaucratique (1963; English 1964) rests on two case studies, a clerical agency and a state industrial monopoly. L'acteur et le système (1977; English 1980) is theoretical.Who disputes itSocietal effect and comparative business systems: D'Iribarne argues that national logics of conduct, such as a French logic of honor, explain differences that Crozier attributed to power games.The French bureaucratic school (strategic analysis) in The Schools of Organization DesignThe Japanese-firm literature1960s to the presentWhat it claimsThe large Japanese firm coordinates operating decisions through horizontal information sharing among semi-autonomous shops and uses its ranking hierarchy mainly as an incentive scheme (Aoki). It creates knowledge through middle-up-down management (Nonaka and Takeuchi).What it has shownAoki (1986) is a formal model. Lincoln, Hanada, and McBride (1986) compared 51 Japanese and 55 United States manufacturing plants, and Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) rest on case studies, chiefly of Japanese firms. Fruin (1994) found the enterprise system defined at three levels.Who disputes itLabor process and critical theory reads shop-floor delegation as control: Sewell and Wilkinson argue that just-in-time and total quality regimes delegate tactical responsibility while centralizing strategic control.The Japanese-firm literature in The Schools of Organization DesignThe Scandinavian and Dutch socio-technical schools1960s to 2000sWhat it claimsThe Scandinavian program sought democracy at work through field experiments with semi-autonomous groups, then through democratic dialogue. The Dutch school's design theory turns complex organizations with simple jobs into simple organizations with complex jobs.What it has shownEmery and Thorsrud reported field experiments in Norwegian industry; Gustavsen (1992) records that they spread less than hoped, his reason for turning to dialogue. Berggren studied work organization in the Swedish auto industry. The Dutch work rests on design cases and argument.Who disputes itThe Japanese-firm literature: defenders of the Toyota system hold that standardized work with employee participation learns faster; Berggren reports Swedish long-cycle plants matching a line plant on productivity.The Scandinavian and Dutch socio-technical schools in The Schools of Organization DesignConfiguration theory1970s to the presentWhat it claimsStructures cluster into a small number of internally coherent configurations whose elements reinforce one another, so organizations move between a few types in large jumps, not small steps. Mintzberg's five configurations each rest on one coordinating mechanism.What it has shownDoty, Glick, and Huber (1993) found that fit to Miles and Snow's ideal types predicted effectiveness while fit to Mintzberg's did not. A meta-analysis of 40 tests (Ketchen and colleagues 1997) found that configuration partly explains performance, more so with broad definitions.Who disputes itStructural contingency theory: Donaldson counters that most organizations sit at intermediate points on a continuum of fits, not in a few configurations, and that studies over time find mostly incremental change.Configuration theory in The Schools of Organization DesignInformation processing1970s to the presentWhat it claimsThe more uncertain the task, the more information must be processed during its execution. An organization either reduces that need, through slack resources or self-contained tasks, or raises its capacity, through vertical information systems or lateral relations up to the matrix.What it has shownGalbraith (1973, 1974) built the framework from cases and from Simon's theory of bounded rationality, and Tushman and Nadler (1978) set it out as an integrating concept for design. Daft and Lengel (1986) argued that structure must reduce equivocality as well as supply data.Who disputes itThe Carnegie school and the attention-based view: Ocasio holds that firm behavior results from how the firm channels and distributes attention, so structure governs where attention goes, not only how much is processed.Information processing in The Schools of Organization DesignLabor process and critical theory1970s to the presentWhat it claimsStructure is above all a system of control over labor. Braverman argued that management deskills work by separating conception from execution; Edwards traced a sequence from simple control by the boss to technical control through machines to bureaucratic control through rules.What it has shownHistorical and theoretical (Braverman 1974; Edwards 1979). Delbridge (1995), observing a Japanese-owned plant in England, found that just-in-time and total quality regimes combined the control of labor with management's economic goals more completely than piece rates had.Who disputes itBureaucracy and its critics: Adler argues that labor process theory ignores the progressive socialization of the labor process, which drives long-term skill upgrading, and disputes deskilling as the trend.Labor process and critical theory in The Schools of Organization DesignStrategic choice1970s to the presentWhat it claimsStructure is the outcome of choices by those with power in the organization, who decide on strategic action, including the structural form, the manipulation of environmental features, and the performance standards to be met. Context constrains but does not determine structure.What it has shownLargely conceptual: Child (1972) built the argument from gaps in contingency findings, and the empirical case rests mostly on the modest share of structural variance contingencies explain. A 2026 review of 42 studies finds upper echelons theory their main theoretical anchor.Who disputes itStructural contingency theory: Donaldson replies that organizations mostly adopt the structures their contingencies dictate, to avoid the loss of performance misfit brings, so choice over structure is at most limited.Strategic choice in The Schools of Organization DesignThe German codetermination literature1970s to the presentWhat it claimsWorks councils and employee board seats form a structural layer through which coordination can become negotiation between management and employees. Defenders argue that it supports long-term employment, training, and cooperation; critics, that it weakens shareholder control.What it has shownJäger, Schoefer, and Heining (2021) found board-level codetermination left wages unchanged and, if anything, raised capital formation. Jirjahn (2011) reports studies pointing to positive works council effects; a meta-analysis found codetermination laws tied to lower productivity.Who disputes itOrganizational economics (Gorton and Schmid) found that firms with equal employee and shareholder representation did worse for their shareholders than firms with one-third employee representation.The German codetermination literature in The Schools of Organization DesignOrganizational economics: decision rights, authority, and complementarities1976 to the presentWhat it claimsDesign is the joint choice of who holds which decision rights, how performance is measured, and how it is rewarded. Rights should be placed where the specific knowledge lies, formal authority differs from real authority, and practices are complements that pay off in clusters.What it has shownIchniowski, Shaw, and Prennushi (1997) found, on 36 steel finishing lines, that lines using a set of innovative work practices achieved substantially higher productivity, consistent with complementarities. Bloom and colleagues found more decentralization where trust was higher.Who disputes itGhoshal argued that management research has shaped managers' worldview with ideologically inspired amoral theories, built on a scientific model that excludes human intentionality and so denies moral considerations.Organizational economics: decision rights, authority, and complementarities in The Schools of Organization DesignInstitutional theory1977 to the presentWhat it claimsFormal structures are often adopted because they are legitimate in the organization's field, as rationalized myths, and then decoupled from the work done. Organizations in a field grow alike through coercive, mimetic, and normative isomorphism, whether or not it is efficient.What it has shownTolbert and Zucker (1983) found that city characteristics predicted early but not later adoption of civil service reform, which they read as institutionalization. Palmer, Jennings, and Zhou (1993) found support for institutional and economic accounts of late M-form adoption.Who disputes itStructural contingency theory: Kraatz and Zajac found little support for neoinstitutional predictions in 631 liberal arts colleges, which grew less alike; the change they studied was curricular, not structural.Institutional theory in The Schools of Organization DesignPopulation ecology1977 to the presentWhat it claimsOrganizations face strong structural inertia, because selection favors the reliability and accountability of stable structures. Change in a population's forms comes mainly from founding and failure, not adaptation, and changing core features resets the liability of newness.What it has shownAmburgey, Kelly, and Barnett (1993) found that the effects of change on the hazard of failure vary by type of change and over time, and that rates of change depend on how often and how recently an organization has changed. Carroll and Hannan (2000) set out the program's methods.Who disputes itFor structural contingency theory, Donaldson argues that ecology understates managers' capacity to adapt structure.Population ecology in The Schools of Organization DesignResource dependence1978 to the presentWhat it claimsOrganizations depend on outside parties for critical resources, and structure follows the management of that dependence: units that cope with critical dependencies gain power, and boundaries are redrawn through cooptation, joint ventures, and mergers to absorb constraint.What it has shownPfeffer and Salancik (1978) assembled studies of boards, mergers, and joint ventures. A meta-analysis of 157 tests (Drees and Heugens 2013) corroborated the main prediction: organizations meet resource dependencies with interorganizational arrangements that raise their autonomy.Who disputes itTransaction cost economics and the M-form hypothesis explains boundaries by efficiency; resource dependence, by power and constraint.Resource dependence in The Schools of Organization DesignThe business-groups literature1978 to the presentWhat it claimsGroups of legally independent firms bound by ownership and social ties are a durable form of their own, neither one firm nor a market. Where institutions function poorly, groups can benefit member firms and can destroy value; they are sometimes paragons, sometimes parasites.What it has shownKhanna and Palepu (2000) found that affiliates of the most diversified Indian groups outperformed unaffiliated firms. A meta-analysis of 141 studies (Carney and colleagues 2011) found that affiliation lowers performance in general, less so where institutions are underdeveloped.Who disputes itOrganizational economics: agency writers read pyramids and cross-holdings as devices that separate control from ownership; Almeida and Wolfenzon offer a financing rationale for pyramids instead.The business-groups literature in The Schools of Organization DesignScandinavian institutionalism1980s to the presentWhat it claimsIdeas of organizing do not diffuse unchanged; they travel and are translated as they are adopted, so a form taken up in one place is not the same form elsewhere. Organizations can also be built of organizations (meta-organizations), which behave differently.What it has shownA discussion paper by Czarniawska and Joerges (1995) contrasts the diffusion of ideas with their translation, drawing on examples such as Swedish municipal reform; the work on meta-organizations (Ahrne and Brunsson 2008) is conceptual.Who disputes itInstitutional theory can read the same processes, seen from a translocal view, as institutional isomorphism, though translation holds that each adopter modifies an idea, so an institution re-created elsewhere is new.Scandinavian institutionalism in The Schools of Organization DesignSocietal effect and comparative business systems1980s to the presentWhat it claimsFirms matched on size, technology, and industry differ systematically by country, because how a society educates, trains, recruits, and promotes its workforce, and its industrial relations, shape how work is divided and supervised, so structure is partly a national product.What it has shownMaurice, Sorge, and Warner (1980) compared closely matched manufacturing units in France, West Germany, and Great Britain and found more pervasive differences in their organization than usually recognized. Whitley (1999) set out a comparative account of business systems.Who disputes itStructural contingency theory stresses culture-free elements of structure; matched comparisons find nationally different shapes of organization.Societal effect and comparative business systems in The Schools of Organization DesignThe network perspective on organizations1985 to the presentWhat it claimsOrganizations and their members are nodes joined by ties, and the pattern of ties shapes what they can do. Economic action is embedded in networks of personal relations (Granovetter 1985), and network forms are a distinct form, not a hybrid of market and hierarchy (Powell 1990).What it has shownPodolny and Page (1998) review the research and find that network forms foster learning, confer status and legitimacy, bring economic benefits, help manage resource dependencies, and give employees considerable autonomy, and they ask for attention to networks' dysfunctions.Who disputes itTransaction cost economics: Williamson treats the hybrid as a third generic form between market and hierarchy; for Powell, network forms are a distinct form, not a mix of the two.The network perspective on organizations in The Schools of Organization DesignComputational organization design and search1990s to the presentWhat it claimsDesign choices interact, so design space is a rugged landscape with many local peaks, and structure affects how well an organization searches it. Decentralizing interdependent decisions can trap units on poor peaks; temporary decentralization, then reintegration, can help.What it has shownMostly simulation, with one field test: Csaszar (2012), with more than 150,000 stock-picking decisions by 609 mutual funds, found that decision-making structure affects the number of initiatives pursued and the omission and commission errors made.Who disputes itNo school in the record disputes it head on; it disputes structural contingency theory, whose bivariate fit, its simulations show, cannot capture how the best design depends on interactions among choices.Computational organization design and search in The Schools of Organization DesignThe new-forms debate1990s to the presentWhat it claimsOrganizations must solve four universal problems (dividing tasks, allocating them, providing rewards, and providing information), and a form is new when it solves them in new ways. Self-managing organizations radically decentralize authority; skeptics hold hierarchy reappears.What it has shownFoss (2003) traced the rise and partial reversal of Oticon's spaghetti organization to the problem of selective intervention. A meta-analysis of 54 studies of 13,914 teams (Greer and colleagues 2018) found that hierarchy within teams on net slightly lowers team performance.Who disputes itBureaucracy and its critics: removing formal structure leaves informal elites whose power is unaccountable (Freeman), and democratic and network organizations are much less hierarchy-free than their labels suggest.The new-forms debate in The Schools of Organization DesignThe algorithmic-management literature2015 to the presentWhat it claimsSoftware does much of the directing, evaluating, and disciplining that managers and rules once did. Kellogg, Valentine, and Christin (2020) call algorithmic control a new contested terrain; Puranam (2021) treats dividing decisions between people and machines as a design problem.What it has shownMostly qualitative field studies of gig work. Wood and colleagues (2019), with 107 interviews in six countries and 679 survey respondents, found that algorithmic management tends to give remote gig workers flexibility and autonomy, but also low pay, isolation, and overwork.Who disputes itLabor process and critical theory reads control at work as contested terrain; Kellogg, Valentine, and Christin take up that view but argue that algorithmic control is distinct from earlier forms.The algorithmic-management literature in The Schools of Organization DesignFunctional structureOrigin: 1911 to 1937.Family: Classical hierarchies.Line and staffOrigin: 1916 to 1943.Family: Classical hierarchies.Multidivisional (M-form) by productOrigin: 1920s practice; named and analyzed 1962 to 1975.Family: Divisionalized forms.Machine bureaucracyOrigin: 1922 (Weber); 1979 (Mintzberg).Family: Classical hierarchies.Divisional by customer or market segmentOrigin: 1937; 2005.Family: Divisionalized forms.Matrix organizationOrigin: 1950s to 1960s practice; analyzed 1971 to 1977.Family: Lateral and multidimensional forms.Co-determined organizationOrigin: 1951 to 1976 (the laws); 1984 to 2022 (the main studies).Family: Forms from other traditions.Socio-technical autonomous work groupsOrigin: 1951 to 1965.Family: Team-based and self-managing forms.Stratified hierarchy (requisite organization)Origin: 1951 to 1989.Family: Classical hierarchies.Cooperative organizationOrigin: 1958 to 1999.Family: Forms from other traditions.Linking-pin organization (System 4)Origin: 1961 to 1967.Family: Team-based and self-managing forms.Divisional by regionOrigin: 1962 to 1972.Family: Divisionalized forms.Adhocracy (innovative organization)Origin: 1968 to 1979.Family: Professional, project, and knowledge forms.J-form (the Japanese firm)Origin: 1968 to 1990.Family: Forms from other traditions.Professional bureaucracyOrigin: 1968 to 1979.Family: Professional, project, and knowledge forms.Holding company (H-form)Origin: 1972 to 1975; 1987.Family: Divisionalized forms.Ambidextrous organizationOrigin: 1976 to 2004.Family: Professional, project, and knowledge forms.Simple structureOrigin: 1979.Family: Classical hierarchies.Hybrid structureOrigin: 1980 to the present.Family: Lateral and multidimensional forms.Missionary (ideological) organizationOrigin: 1980 to 1989.Family: Ideological forms.Network, modular, and virtual organizationOrigin: 1986 to 1990.Family: Network and market-like forms.Transnational and multidimensional organizationOrigin: 1987 to 1989.Family: Lateral and multidimensional forms.Business group (keiretsu, chaebol, family house)Origin: 1988 to 2007.Family: Forms from other traditions.Shamrock organizationOrigin: 1988 to 1989.Family: Network and market-like forms.Federal organizationOrigin: 1989 to 1992.Family: Network and market-like forms.Self-managing organization (less-hierarchical forms)Origin: 1989 to 2017.Family: Team-based and self-managing forms.Boundaryless organizationOrigin: 1990 to 1995.Family: Network and market-like forms.Front-back organizationOrigin: 1990s to 2007.Family: Lateral and multidimensional forms.Professional partnership (P2 form)Origin: 1990.Family: Professional, project, and knowledge forms.The corporate center and shared servicesOrigin: 1991 to 2000.Family: Divisionalized forms.Internal market organizationOrigin: 1993 to 1994.Family: Network and market-like forms.Process (horizontal) organizationOrigin: 1993 to 1999.Family: Lateral and multidimensional forms.Cellular organizationOrigin: 1994 to 1997.Family: Network and market-like forms.Hypertext organizationOrigin: 1994 to 1995.Family: Forms from other traditions.Team-based organizationOrigin: 1995.Family: Team-based and self-managing forms.Project-based organizationOrigin: 2000 to 2006.Family: Professional, project, and knowledge forms.Agile at scaleOrigin: 2001 to 2016.Family: Contemporary and emerging forms.Distributed (all-remote) organizationOrigin: 2002 to 2021.Family: Contemporary and emerging forms.Open-source and community-based organizationOrigin: 2002 to 2007.Family: Contemporary and emerging forms.Algorithmically managed organizationOrigin: 2015 to 2020.Family: Contemporary and emerging forms.Team of teamsOrigin: 2015.Family: Team-based and self-managing forms.

The schools by first year

1. Bureaucracy and its critics1900s to 1950s, revived from the 1990sWhat it claimsWeber held that rational-legal authority exercised through an office hierarchy, written rules, trained officials, and promotion by qualification is technically superior in precision, speed, and reliability. Critics studied its unintended consequences, Michels's iron law sharpest.What it has shownMerton (1940) argued, with no test, that rules can turn from means into ends; case studies followed. The Aston group concluded that the type's dimensions vary independently, and Wagner's meta-analysis (2021) found that many of their interrelationships have weakened.Who disputes itHuman relations and System 4 sets the costs of impersonal rules to motivation and cooperation against the technical superiority Weber stresses.
2. Classical administration1910s to 1940s, and in German to the 1970sWhat it claimsThere are general principles of administration, among them division of work, unity of command, a scalar chain of authority, and a limited span of control, and a structure built to them will be efficient in most settings. Taylor added that planners should set work methods.What it has shownThe school offered reasoning and experience, not tests. Woodward (1965) found that the spans and levels of the more successful firms in her sample differed by production system, and Simon (1946) showed that the principles come in pairs that point in opposite directions.Who disputes itStructural contingency theory found that the structure of successful firms varies with technology and environment, where classical writers treat their principles as general.
3. Human relations and System 41920s to 1960sWhat it claimsOutput depends on the social relations of work, the norms of informal groups, and the style of supervision as much as on formal design. Likert's System 4, overlapping work groups joined by linking-pin managers under participative management, outperforms authoritative systems.What it has shownThe founding evidence is the Hawthorne studies, which later reanalyses dispute (Carey 1967; Levitt and List 2011). Likert's support came largely from his own institute's surveys. Wagner (1994) found participation's effects on performance and satisfaction significant but small.Who disputes itLabor process and critical theory reads human relations as a technique of managerial control rather than a change in the distribution of power.
4. Transaction cost economics and the M-form hypothesis1937, then the 1970s to the presentWhat it claimsFirms exist, and are organized as they are, to economize on transaction costs. Hierarchy replaces the market when assets are specific, uncertainty is high, and exchange is frequent, and the multidivisional form should outperform the functional form in large, diversified firms.What it has shownArmour and Teece (1978) found, in United States petroleum firms from 1955 to 1973, a positive relationship between the multidivisional form and profitability while the form was spreading, but not once an equilibrium in organizational form was reached.Who disputes itThe network perspective on organizations: Granovetter argued that the theory undersocializes economic action, which is embedded in networks of personal relations that also produce trust and order.
5. The Carnegie school and the attention-based view1940s to the presentWhat it claimsPeople in organizations are boundedly rational, so structure matters because it sets the premises of their decisions and channels their attention: who sees which problems, which goals they pursue, and which routines they follow. Ocasio makes structure distribute attention.What it has shownMarch and Simon (1958) drew propositions from the existing literature, and Cyert and March (1963) added process models and simulations. Two studies show hierarchy shaping what is sent up as well as what is chosen (Reitzig and Maciejovsky 2015; Keum and See 2017).Who disputes itOrganizational economics: decision rights, authority, and complementarities models a principal and agents with defined objectives; the Carnegie school, firms as coalitions with unresolved goal conflict.
6. Socio-technical systems1950s to 1980sWhat it claimsAn organization is a social system and a technical system that must be designed together. The same technology admits more than one way of organizing work, and groups that own a whole task and control its variances at the source perform better and are more satisfied.What it has shownTrist and Bamforth (1951) found that longwall mechanization broke up self-regulating work groups. A review of 134 experiments found them extremely successful overall, and Stewart (2006) linked team autonomy to performance; studies of socialist brigades and Volkswagen qualify it.Who disputes itLabor process and critical theory: Kelly argued that labor intensification, not joint optimization, accounts for what socio-technical redesign achieved, and that the part of pay incentives was seriously underestimated.
7. The economics of the labor-managed firm and of enterprise ownership1958 to the presentWhat it claimsA firm run by its workers behaves differently from one run for investors: Ward modeled the Yugoslav-style firm as maximizing income per worker. Hansmann argued that an ownership form's success depends on the balance between the costs of market contracting and of ownership.What it has shownBurdín (2014) found a 29 percent lower hazard of dissolution for Uruguayan worker-managed firms than for conventional ones, and Fakhfakh, Pérotin, and Gago (2012) found French labor-managed firms as productive or more so in every industry studied.Who disputes itOrganizational economics (Jensen and Meckling) contrasts the labor-managed firm, in which tradable residual claims are legally prohibited, with cooperatives and partnerships that arise out of voluntary contracting.
8. Modularity and the mirroring hypothesis1960s to the presentWhat it claimsComplex systems are built of nearly decomposable parts, and an organization's structure tends to mirror the architecture of what it makes: modular products allow loosely coupled organizations, and tightly coupled products need tightly coupled teams. Conway's law runs in reverse.What it has shownColfer and Baldwin (2016) review the empirical studies and report both support and principled exceptions. Direct tests point both ways: MacCormack, Baldwin, and Rusnak (2012) found open source products more modular than their commercial pairs; dynamic components break the mirror.Who disputes itNo school in the record disputes it head on; it answers information processing, which meets the coordination load inside the organization; mirroring writers locate it in the product's architecture.
9. Strategy and structure1960s to 1980sWhat it claimsStructure follows strategy: firms that diversify by product or geography outgrow the centralized functional structure and, after a lag and usually a crisis, adopt divisions. Chandler drew this from the histories of DuPont, General Motors, Standard Oil of New Jersey, and Sears.What it has shownChandler (1962) is comparative business history of four firms set against a wider survey. Rumelt (1974) related diversification and structure to performance, and Egelhoff (1988), with 34 multinationals, found some of Stopford and Wells's relationships supported and others not.Who disputes itInstitutional theory: in Fligstein's model divisions spread with a product-related or unrelated strategy, presidents from sales or finance, and other firms in the industry changing; strategy was one of three.
10. Structural contingency theory1960s to the presentWhat it claimsThere is no one best structure. Performance depends on fit between structure and contingencies such as environment, technology, size, and strategy, on an open-system view of the organization. Drazin and Van de Ven separate fit as selection, interaction, and systems.What it has shownBurns and Stalker, Woodward, and the Aston group related structure to context; Drazin and Van de Ven (1985) supported selection and systems fit only. Pennings (1975) found that fit did not explain effectiveness; Schoonhoven (1981) found traditional hypotheses unsupported.Who disputes itStrategic choice: Child argued that contingency theory explains structure by the constraints of context and leaves out the political process by which power-holders choose strategic action, structural forms included.
11. The French bureaucratic school (strategic analysis)1960s to 1980sWhat it claimsA bureaucracy is a system of power relations organized around zones of uncertainty. Impersonal rules and centralization protect members from depending on one another, those who control uncertainties hold power, and, unable to correct its errors, it changes only through crisis.What it has shownLe phénomène bureaucratique (1963; English 1964) rests on two case studies, a clerical agency and a state industrial monopoly. L'acteur et le système (1977; English 1980) is theoretical.Who disputes itSocietal effect and comparative business systems: D'Iribarne argues that national logics of conduct, such as a French logic of honor, explain differences that Crozier attributed to power games.
12. The Japanese-firm literature1960s to the presentWhat it claimsThe large Japanese firm coordinates operating decisions through horizontal information sharing among semi-autonomous shops and uses its ranking hierarchy mainly as an incentive scheme (Aoki). It creates knowledge through middle-up-down management (Nonaka and Takeuchi).What it has shownAoki (1986) is a formal model. Lincoln, Hanada, and McBride (1986) compared 51 Japanese and 55 United States manufacturing plants, and Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) rest on case studies, chiefly of Japanese firms. Fruin (1994) found the enterprise system defined at three levels.Who disputes itLabor process and critical theory reads shop-floor delegation as control: Sewell and Wilkinson argue that just-in-time and total quality regimes delegate tactical responsibility while centralizing strategic control.
13. The Scandinavian and Dutch socio-technical schools1960s to 2000sWhat it claimsThe Scandinavian program sought democracy at work through field experiments with semi-autonomous groups, then through democratic dialogue. The Dutch school's design theory turns complex organizations with simple jobs into simple organizations with complex jobs.What it has shownEmery and Thorsrud reported field experiments in Norwegian industry; Gustavsen (1992) records that they spread less than hoped, his reason for turning to dialogue. Berggren studied work organization in the Swedish auto industry. The Dutch work rests on design cases and argument.Who disputes itThe Japanese-firm literature: defenders of the Toyota system hold that standardized work with employee participation learns faster; Berggren reports Swedish long-cycle plants matching a line plant on productivity.
14. Configuration theory1970s to the presentWhat it claimsStructures cluster into a small number of internally coherent configurations whose elements reinforce one another, so organizations move between a few types in large jumps, not small steps. Mintzberg's five configurations each rest on one coordinating mechanism.What it has shownDoty, Glick, and Huber (1993) found that fit to Miles and Snow's ideal types predicted effectiveness while fit to Mintzberg's did not. A meta-analysis of 40 tests (Ketchen and colleagues 1997) found that configuration partly explains performance, more so with broad definitions.Who disputes itStructural contingency theory: Donaldson counters that most organizations sit at intermediate points on a continuum of fits, not in a few configurations, and that studies over time find mostly incremental change.
15. Information processing1970s to the presentWhat it claimsThe more uncertain the task, the more information must be processed during its execution. An organization either reduces that need, through slack resources or self-contained tasks, or raises its capacity, through vertical information systems or lateral relations up to the matrix.What it has shownGalbraith (1973, 1974) built the framework from cases and from Simon's theory of bounded rationality, and Tushman and Nadler (1978) set it out as an integrating concept for design. Daft and Lengel (1986) argued that structure must reduce equivocality as well as supply data.Who disputes itThe Carnegie school and the attention-based view: Ocasio holds that firm behavior results from how the firm channels and distributes attention, so structure governs where attention goes, not only how much is processed.
16. Labor process and critical theory1970s to the presentWhat it claimsStructure is above all a system of control over labor. Braverman argued that management deskills work by separating conception from execution; Edwards traced a sequence from simple control by the boss to technical control through machines to bureaucratic control through rules.What it has shownHistorical and theoretical (Braverman 1974; Edwards 1979). Delbridge (1995), observing a Japanese-owned plant in England, found that just-in-time and total quality regimes combined the control of labor with management's economic goals more completely than piece rates had.Who disputes itBureaucracy and its critics: Adler argues that labor process theory ignores the progressive socialization of the labor process, which drives long-term skill upgrading, and disputes deskilling as the trend.
17. Strategic choice1970s to the presentWhat it claimsStructure is the outcome of choices by those with power in the organization, who decide on strategic action, including the structural form, the manipulation of environmental features, and the performance standards to be met. Context constrains but does not determine structure.What it has shownLargely conceptual: Child (1972) built the argument from gaps in contingency findings, and the empirical case rests mostly on the modest share of structural variance contingencies explain. A 2026 review of 42 studies finds upper echelons theory their main theoretical anchor.Who disputes itStructural contingency theory: Donaldson replies that organizations mostly adopt the structures their contingencies dictate, to avoid the loss of performance misfit brings, so choice over structure is at most limited.
18. The German codetermination literature1970s to the presentWhat it claimsWorks councils and employee board seats form a structural layer through which coordination can become negotiation between management and employees. Defenders argue that it supports long-term employment, training, and cooperation; critics, that it weakens shareholder control.What it has shownJäger, Schoefer, and Heining (2021) found board-level codetermination left wages unchanged and, if anything, raised capital formation. Jirjahn (2011) reports studies pointing to positive works council effects; a meta-analysis found codetermination laws tied to lower productivity.Who disputes itOrganizational economics (Gorton and Schmid) found that firms with equal employee and shareholder representation did worse for their shareholders than firms with one-third employee representation.
19. Organizational economics: decision rights, authority, and complementarities1976 to the presentWhat it claimsDesign is the joint choice of who holds which decision rights, how performance is measured, and how it is rewarded. Rights should be placed where the specific knowledge lies, formal authority differs from real authority, and practices are complements that pay off in clusters.What it has shownIchniowski, Shaw, and Prennushi (1997) found, on 36 steel finishing lines, that lines using a set of innovative work practices achieved substantially higher productivity, consistent with complementarities. Bloom and colleagues found more decentralization where trust was higher.Who disputes itGhoshal argued that management research has shaped managers' worldview with ideologically inspired amoral theories, built on a scientific model that excludes human intentionality and so denies moral considerations.
20. Institutional theory1977 to the presentWhat it claimsFormal structures are often adopted because they are legitimate in the organization's field, as rationalized myths, and then decoupled from the work done. Organizations in a field grow alike through coercive, mimetic, and normative isomorphism, whether or not it is efficient.What it has shownTolbert and Zucker (1983) found that city characteristics predicted early but not later adoption of civil service reform, which they read as institutionalization. Palmer, Jennings, and Zhou (1993) found support for institutional and economic accounts of late M-form adoption.Who disputes itStructural contingency theory: Kraatz and Zajac found little support for neoinstitutional predictions in 631 liberal arts colleges, which grew less alike; the change they studied was curricular, not structural.
21. Population ecology1977 to the presentWhat it claimsOrganizations face strong structural inertia, because selection favors the reliability and accountability of stable structures. Change in a population's forms comes mainly from founding and failure, not adaptation, and changing core features resets the liability of newness.What it has shownAmburgey, Kelly, and Barnett (1993) found that the effects of change on the hazard of failure vary by type of change and over time, and that rates of change depend on how often and how recently an organization has changed. Carroll and Hannan (2000) set out the program's methods.Who disputes itFor structural contingency theory, Donaldson argues that ecology understates managers' capacity to adapt structure.
22. Resource dependence1978 to the presentWhat it claimsOrganizations depend on outside parties for critical resources, and structure follows the management of that dependence: units that cope with critical dependencies gain power, and boundaries are redrawn through cooptation, joint ventures, and mergers to absorb constraint.What it has shownPfeffer and Salancik (1978) assembled studies of boards, mergers, and joint ventures. A meta-analysis of 157 tests (Drees and Heugens 2013) corroborated the main prediction: organizations meet resource dependencies with interorganizational arrangements that raise their autonomy.Who disputes itTransaction cost economics and the M-form hypothesis explains boundaries by efficiency; resource dependence, by power and constraint.
23. The business-groups literature1978 to the presentWhat it claimsGroups of legally independent firms bound by ownership and social ties are a durable form of their own, neither one firm nor a market. Where institutions function poorly, groups can benefit member firms and can destroy value; they are sometimes paragons, sometimes parasites.What it has shownKhanna and Palepu (2000) found that affiliates of the most diversified Indian groups outperformed unaffiliated firms. A meta-analysis of 141 studies (Carney and colleagues 2011) found that affiliation lowers performance in general, less so where institutions are underdeveloped.Who disputes itOrganizational economics: agency writers read pyramids and cross-holdings as devices that separate control from ownership; Almeida and Wolfenzon offer a financing rationale for pyramids instead.
24. Scandinavian institutionalism1980s to the presentWhat it claimsIdeas of organizing do not diffuse unchanged; they travel and are translated as they are adopted, so a form taken up in one place is not the same form elsewhere. Organizations can also be built of organizations (meta-organizations), which behave differently.What it has shownA discussion paper by Czarniawska and Joerges (1995) contrasts the diffusion of ideas with their translation, drawing on examples such as Swedish municipal reform; the work on meta-organizations (Ahrne and Brunsson 2008) is conceptual.Who disputes itInstitutional theory can read the same processes, seen from a translocal view, as institutional isomorphism, though translation holds that each adopter modifies an idea, so an institution re-created elsewhere is new.
25. Societal effect and comparative business systems1980s to the presentWhat it claimsFirms matched on size, technology, and industry differ systematically by country, because how a society educates, trains, recruits, and promotes its workforce, and its industrial relations, shape how work is divided and supervised, so structure is partly a national product.What it has shownMaurice, Sorge, and Warner (1980) compared closely matched manufacturing units in France, West Germany, and Great Britain and found more pervasive differences in their organization than usually recognized. Whitley (1999) set out a comparative account of business systems.Who disputes itStructural contingency theory stresses culture-free elements of structure; matched comparisons find nationally different shapes of organization.
26. The network perspective on organizations1985 to the presentWhat it claimsOrganizations and their members are nodes joined by ties, and the pattern of ties shapes what they can do. Economic action is embedded in networks of personal relations (Granovetter 1985), and network forms are a distinct form, not a hybrid of market and hierarchy (Powell 1990).What it has shownPodolny and Page (1998) review the research and find that network forms foster learning, confer status and legitimacy, bring economic benefits, help manage resource dependencies, and give employees considerable autonomy, and they ask for attention to networks' dysfunctions.Who disputes itTransaction cost economics: Williamson treats the hybrid as a third generic form between market and hierarchy; for Powell, network forms are a distinct form, not a mix of the two.
27. Computational organization design and search1990s to the presentWhat it claimsDesign choices interact, so design space is a rugged landscape with many local peaks, and structure affects how well an organization searches it. Decentralizing interdependent decisions can trap units on poor peaks; temporary decentralization, then reintegration, can help.What it has shownMostly simulation, with one field test: Csaszar (2012), with more than 150,000 stock-picking decisions by 609 mutual funds, found that decision-making structure affects the number of initiatives pursued and the omission and commission errors made.Who disputes itNo school in the record disputes it head on; it disputes structural contingency theory, whose bivariate fit, its simulations show, cannot capture how the best design depends on interactions among choices.
28. The new-forms debate1990s to the presentWhat it claimsOrganizations must solve four universal problems (dividing tasks, allocating them, providing rewards, and providing information), and a form is new when it solves them in new ways. Self-managing organizations radically decentralize authority; skeptics hold hierarchy reappears.What it has shownFoss (2003) traced the rise and partial reversal of Oticon's spaghetti organization to the problem of selective intervention. A meta-analysis of 54 studies of 13,914 teams (Greer and colleagues 2018) found that hierarchy within teams on net slightly lowers team performance.Who disputes itBureaucracy and its critics: removing formal structure leaves informal elites whose power is unaccountable (Freeman), and democratic and network organizations are much less hierarchy-free than their labels suggest.
29. The algorithmic-management literature2015 to the presentWhat it claimsSoftware does much of the directing, evaluating, and disciplining that managers and rules once did. Kellogg, Valentine, and Christin (2020) call algorithmic control a new contested terrain; Puranam (2021) treats dividing decisions between people and machines as a design problem.What it has shownMostly qualitative field studies of gig work. Wood and colleagues (2019), with 107 interviews in six countries and 679 survey respondents, found that algorithmic management tends to give remote gig workers flexibility and autonomy, but also low pay, isolation, and overwork.Who disputes itLabor process and critical theory reads control at work as contested terrain; Kellogg, Valentine, and Christin take up that view but argue that algorithmic control is distinct from earlier forms.

The forms by first year

1. Functional structure: 1911 to 1937
2. Line and staff: 1916 to 1943
3. Multidivisional (M-form) by product: 1920s practice; named and analyzed 1962 to 1975
4. Machine bureaucracy: 1922 (Weber); 1979 (Mintzberg)
5. Divisional by customer or market segment: 1937; 2005
6. Matrix organization: 1950s to 1960s practice; analyzed 1971 to 1977
7. Co-determined organization: 1951 to 1976 (the laws); 1984 to 2022 (the main studies)
8. Socio-technical autonomous work groups: 1951 to 1965
9. Stratified hierarchy (requisite organization): 1951 to 1989
10. Cooperative organization: 1958 to 1999
11. Linking-pin organization (System 4): 1961 to 1967
12. Divisional by region: 1962 to 1972
13. Adhocracy (innovative organization): 1968 to 1979
14. J-form (the Japanese firm): 1968 to 1990
15. Professional bureaucracy: 1968 to 1979
16. Holding company (H-form): 1972 to 1975; 1987
17. Ambidextrous organization: 1976 to 2004
18. Simple structure: 1979
19. Hybrid structure: 1980 to the present
20. Missionary (ideological) organization: 1980 to 1989
21. Network, modular, and virtual organization: 1986 to 1990
22. Transnational and multidimensional organization: 1987 to 1989
23. Business group (keiretsu, chaebol, family house): 1988 to 2007
24. Shamrock organization: 1988 to 1989
25. Federal organization: 1989 to 1992
26. Self-managing organization (less-hierarchical forms): 1989 to 2017
27. Boundaryless organization: 1990 to 1995
28. Front-back organization: 1990s to 2007
29. Professional partnership (P2 form): 1990
30. The corporate center and shared services: 1991 to 2000
31. Internal market organization: 1993 to 1994
32. Process (horizontal) organization: 1993 to 1999
33. Cellular organization: 1994 to 1997
34. Hypertext organization: 1994 to 1995
35. Team-based organization: 1995
36. Project-based organization: 2000 to 2006
37. Agile at scale: 2001 to 2016
38. Distributed (all-remote) organization: 2002 to 2021
39. Open-source and community-based organization: 2002 to 2007
40. Algorithmically managed organization: 2015 to 2020
41. Team of teams: 2015

Twenty-three of the 29 schools run to the present, and 16 of those began in the 1970s or later. The forms arrive in waves: 14 of the 41 first appear between 1985 and 1994.

Source: Fayol 1949; Weber 1978; Mayo 1933; Trist and Bamforth 1951, an interview-based field study in one industry; Burns and Stalker 1961, a field study of twenty firms; Mintzberg 1979; Child 1972a; Coase 1937; Meyer and Rowan 1977; Hannan and Freeman 1977; Galbraith 1973; Jensen and Meckling 1976; Crozier 1963; Emery and Thorsrud 1969; Yoshino 1968; Streeck 1984a; Kellogg and colleagues 2020, a review of earlier research through one theoretical lens, with no new data; Puranam and colleagues 2014, a conceptual argument; Chandler 1962, several independent case histories by a historian; Pfeffer and Salancik 1978; Simon 1946; Maurice and colleagues 1980, a comparison of matched factories in three countries; Levinthal 1997; Simon 1962; Braverman 1974; Hamilton and Biggart 1988, a comparison of three economies by scholars; Ward 1958; Czarniawska and Joerges 1995; Granovetter 1985.

Semler (1989), a chief executive's account, described Semco, a Brazilian manufacturer. Foss (2003), one case study, traced Oticon's spaghetti organization from the early 1990s. Morning Star appeared in Hamel (2011), a practitioner article. Robertson's Holacracy (2015), a practitioner book, acknowledges Gerard Endenburg's sociocracy as an early influence. Laloux (2014) supplied the label teal, and Getz (2009) the F-form behind the French and Belgian liberated company.

Where it fits

Three cells rest on theory and nine on our judgment; four are contested. No study found tests the form against any factor.

SizeJudgmentSmallFitsMediumFitsLargePartialAgeJudgmentYoungFitsEstablishedFitsOldPartialEnvironmental uncertainty (unpredictability, dynamism)ContestedTheoryStablePartialShiftingFitsUnpredictableContestedEnvironmental complexityJudgmentSimplePartialModeratePartialComplexFitsMunificence and hostilityContestedJudgmentHostileContestedNeutralPartialMunificentContestedDiversity of products and marketsJudgmentSingle or dominant businessPartialRelated diversificationFitsUnrelated diversificationPartialStrategy typeJudgmentDefender (exploitation)StrainAnalyzer (exploitation and exploration)PartialProspector (exploration)PartialTechnology and routinenessContestedTheoryRoutineContestedMixedFitsNonroutineContestedInterdependenceContestedTheoryPooledFitsSequentialContestedReciprocalContestedKnowledge intensity and professionalizationJudgmentLowPartialModeratePartialHighPartialGlobal integration pressureJudgmentLowPartialModeratePartialHighPartialLocal responsiveness pressureJudgmentLowPartialModeratePartialHighPartial

SizeJudgmentSmallFitsMediumFitsLargePartialAgeJudgmentYoungFitsEstablishedFitsOldPartialEnvironmental uncertainty (unpredictability, dynamism)ContestedTheoryStablePartialShiftingFitsUnpredictableContestedEnvironmental complexityJudgmentSimplePartialModeratePartialComplexFitsMunificence and hostilityContestedJudgmentHostileContestedNeutralPartialMunificentContestedDiversity of products and marketsJudgmentSingle or dominant businessPartialRelated diversificationFitsUnrelated diversificationPartialStrategy typeJudgmentDefender (exploitation)StrainAnalyzer (exploitation and exploration)PartialProspector (exploration)PartialTechnology and routinenessContestedTheoryRoutineContestedMixedFitsNonroutineContestedInterdependenceContestedTheoryPooledFitsSequentialContestedReciprocalContestedKnowledge intensity and professionalizationJudgmentLowPartialModeratePartialHighPartialGlobal integration pressureJudgmentLowPartialModeratePartialHighPartialLocal responsiveness pressureJudgmentLowPartialModeratePartialHighPartial

Select a factor to read its reason, sources, basis, and grade.Size. No study compares sizes; the large cases that sustain radically decentralized authority add supporting structures that take back narrow slices of managerial work, which is why the large level is partial. Basis: Judgment. Sources: Martela and Nandram 2025; Martela and colleagues 2026; Foss 2003; Burton and colleagues 2017; Lee and Edmondson 2017.Age. It is easier to found a self-managing organization than to convert an old hierarchy, and keeping the form over time takes monitoring, sanctions, and conflict resolution. Basis: Judgment. Sources: Maier and colleagues 2026; Lee 2024; Hannan and Freeman 1984.Environmental uncertainty (unpredictability, dynamism). Decentralized roles and teams let people respond without waiting for managers, which is the case made for changing conditions; under task ambiguity, team studies find hierarchy helps. Basis: Theory. Grade: conceptual only, no empirical test. Sources: Robertson 2015; Jing and colleagues 2016; Greer and colleagues 2018; Pennings 1975. View 1: Stable partial, Shifting fits, Unpredictable fits. Self-management is offered as the system for a rapidly changing world, and Haier's population of micro-enterprises raised its adaptive capacity. Sources: Robertson 2015; Jing and colleagues 2016. View 2: Stable partial, Shifting fits, Unpredictable partial. Across 54 team studies, task ambiguity strengthened the positive effects of hierarchy, so the least predictable work is where some hierarchy helps. Sources: Greer and colleagues 2018.Environmental complexity. Radically decentralized authority lets many people act on many dissimilar factors at once; nothing read says a simple environment strains it. Basis: Judgment. Sources: Lee and Edmondson 2017; Burton and Obel 2004; Pennings 1975.Munificence and hostility. Works disagree: under threat the pull to recentralize is strong and the fit model's rules do not settle the form, while a survey of small firms found organic structures doing best in hostile environments. Basis: Judgment. Sources: Burton and Obel 2004; Staw and colleagues 1981; Covin and Slevin 1989; Lee 2022. View 1: Hostile partial, Neutral partial, Munificent partial. Radically decentralized authority can react fast, but under threat the pull to recentralize is strong; the fit model's rules do not settle which wins. Sources: Burton and Obel 2004. View 2: Hostile fits, Neutral partial, Munificent strain. Among 161 small manufacturers, organic structures, low in formalization and letting the expert have the most say, did best in hostile environments and mechanistic ones in benign environments; placing the most decentralized form in the table at the organic end is this cell's reading. Sources: Covin and Slevin 1989. View 3: Hostile strain, Neutral partial, Munificent partial. In game development start-ups a flatter hierarchy improved creative success but brought haphazard execution and commercial failure, and the author concludes that adding a few levels of managers can help start-ups survive in their hostile environments. Sources: Lee 2022.Diversity of products and markets. A platform of self-managing micro-enterprises grew its adaptive capacity by building a diverse population of ventures in its core and edge businesses; nothing read covers ventures with nothing in common beyond ownership. Basis: Judgment. Sources: Jing and colleagues 2016.Strategy type. Burton and Obel name low centralization a misfit for a defender; for a prospector, a flatter hierarchy improved ideation and creative success but led to haphazard execution and commercial failure, which cuts both ways. Basis: Judgment. Sources: Lee 2022; Burton and Obel 2004.Technology and routineness. Across 54 studies, hierarchy within teams lowered effectiveness on net, but task ambiguity strengthened its positive effects, so the case for removing it is weakest where the work is least analyzable. Basis: Theory. Grade: conceptual only, no empirical test. Sources: Greer and colleagues 2018; Martela 2019; Bunderson and Boumgarden 2010; Hickson and colleagues 1969; Mohr 1971. View 1: Routine fits, Mixed fits, Nonroutine partial. Hierarchy within teams lowered effectiveness on net, but task ambiguity strengthened its positive effects. Sources: Greer and colleagues 2018. View 2: Routine partial, Mixed fits, Nonroutine fits. Self-management is argued to be especially viable where outputs are highly tailored and employees' expertise and motivation are high. Sources: Martela 2019. View 3: Routine partial, Mixed fits, Nonroutine partial. In self-managed production teams with stable tasks, more specialization, formalization, and hierarchy within the team promoted learning and went with productivity gains, so routine work favors adding structure inside the teams; the study says nothing of the other levels, which follow the first view. Sources: Bunderson and Boumgarden 2010.Interdependence. Self-management is argued to suit low interdependence between units, while a meta-analysis found that task interdependence within teams did not change hierarchy's net harm. Basis: Theory. Grade: conceptual only, no empirical test. Sources: Greer and colleagues 2018; Martela 2019; Langfred 2007; Mahringer and Danner-Schröder 2025. View 1: Pooled fits, Sequential partial, Reciprocal partial. Self-management is argued to be especially viable where interdependence between units is low, and in one agile reorganization autonomous clusters that shared resources created interdependencies that challenged their autonomy. Sources: Martela 2019; Mahringer and Danner-Schröder 2025. View 2: Pooled fits, Sequential fits, Reciprocal fits. Hierarchy within teams lowered effectiveness on net, and task interdependence among team members did not change that. Sources: Greer and colleagues 2018.Knowledge intensity and professionalization. Self-managing organizations have been documented with home care nurses, software engineers, and tomato processors, and no work read ties the form to training levels. Basis: Judgment. Sources: Lee and Edmondson 2017; Martela and Nandram 2025; Hamel 2011; Puranam and Håkonsson 2015; Burton and colleagues 2017.Global integration pressure. No work read ties self-managing organizations to integration pressure across countries, so this factor gives no reason for or against. Basis: Judgment. Sources: Lee and Edmondson 2017.Local responsiveness pressure. No work read ties self-managing organizations to local responsiveness across countries, so this factor gives no reason for or against. Basis: Judgment. Sources: Lee and Edmondson 2017.

Counting the four contested cells, environmental uncertainty, munificence, technology, and interdependence, by their first views, the 36 settings read Fits at 11, Partial at 24, and Strain at 1, the one strain a defender strategy. Nine of the twelve cells rest on judgment.

Source: Martela and Nandram 2025, one case description; Martela and colleagues 2026, one case study; Foss 2003, one case study; Burton and colleagues 2017, one case description; Lee and Edmondson 2017, a review of the literature; Maier and colleagues 2026, a comparison of eighteen organizations by scholars; Lee 2024, one ethnographic case study; Hannan and Freeman 1984; Robertson 2015; Jing and colleagues 2016, one company studied through four of its units; Greer and colleagues 2018, a meta-analysis of 54 studies; Pennings 1975, a quantitative field test of the structural-contingency model; Burton and Obel 2004; Staw and colleagues 1981, a review of earlier evidence at several levels, with no new data; Covin and Slevin 1989, a survey of 161 small manufacturers; Lee 2022, a quantitative study of many start-ups in one industry; Martela 2019, a conceptual argument; Bunderson and Boumgarden 2010, a field study of many teams in one firm; Hickson and colleagues 1969, a multi-organization comparative survey; Mohr 1971, a quantitative field study of technology and structure; Langfred 2007, a longitudinal study of 35 teams; Mahringer and Danner-Schröder 2025, one ethnographic case study; Hamel 2011; Puranam and Håkonsson 2015, one case description.

Size

SmallMediumLargeAny

Age

YoungEstablishedOldAny

Environmental uncertainty (unpredictability, dynamism)

StableShiftingUnpredictableAny

Environmental complexity

SimpleModerateComplexAny

Munificence and hostility

HostileNeutralMunificentAny

Diversity of products and markets

SingleRelatedUnrelatedAny

Strategy type

DefenderAnalyzerProspectorAny

Technology and routineness

RoutineMixedNonroutineAny

Interdependence

PooledSequentialReciprocalAny

Knowledge intensity and professionalization

LowModerateHighAny

Global integration pressure

LowModerateHighAny

Local responsiveness pressure

LowModerateHighAny

Set: 0 of 12 factors. Fits on 0, Partial on 0, Strain on 0, Contested on 0.

Its place in the explorer's rankingEvery factor is on Any: all 41 forms tie, and the explorer lists them alphabetically.1st of 411st of 41, tied with one other1st of 41, tied with 0 othersSunk by a misfit rule: 1st of 41Sunk by a misfit rule: 1st of 41, tied with one otherSunk by a misfit rule: 1st of 41, tied with 0 others

• Flagged (its sources disagree): A defender with authority spread wide. Disputed: Burton and Obel 2004; against it, Mintzberg 1980.
• Flagged (it meets the form only through part of its profile): An analyzer with authority spread wide. Source: Burton and Obel 2004.

Ranking rule: by count of Fits on the factors the reader has set, then fewest Strains, then alphabetical; a fired misfit rule that no source disputes sinks the form to the bottom when every level of the form's profile meets it, a disputed one, or one that meets the form only through one end of a spanned level, one view of a contested profile cell, or one part of a two-part form, is flagged on the row (with both views where it is disputed), and a misfit between two of the reader's own settings is shown once above the list; a contested cell counts only where its views agree at the reader's level, and otherwise shows as Contested; factors on "Any" count for nothing; with every factor on "Any" the list is alphabetical and says so.

Open these settings in the explorerReset

The misfit rules that can fire for this form

• A defender with authority spread wide fires when Strategy type at Defender (exploitation): flagged (its sources disagree). Disputed: Burton and Obel 2004; against it, Mintzberg 1980.
• An analyzer with authority spread wide fires when Strategy type at Analyzer (exploitation and exploration): flagged (it meets the form only through part of its profile). Source: Burton and Obel 2004.

Only the rules against authority spread wide can fire here, in a defender and in an analyzer, two of the 39 contingency misfit rules. Each meets the form only through the decentralized view of its contested centralization, so neither sinks it, and the defender rule is disputed besides.

Source: Burton and Obel 2004; Burton and colleagues 2020a.

• Size. Our judgment: fits small and medium organizations, partial large. Large cases add supports that take back slices of managerial work, at Buurtzorg, over 14,000 employees (Martela and Nandram 2025, one case description), and Reaktor, over 500 (Martela, Mäkkeli, and Kostamo 2026, one case study).
• Age. Our judgment: fits young and established, partial old. Founding is easier than converting, given older organizations' inertia (Hannan and Freeman 1984, a theoretical argument), and keeping it takes care (Maier, Meyer, and Schneider 2026, a comparison of eighteen organizations by scholars).
• Environmental uncertainty. Theory, contested. One view: partial stable, fits shifting and unpredictable, from Robertson's (2015) practitioner claim, with Jing, Zhao, and Teng (2016), one company studied through four of its units, a premise that does not vary uncertainty: Haier's diverse micro-enterprises raised its adaptive capacity, though user interaction did not replace managers' vision in recognizing opportunities, an account close to the company's own view. The other: partial at unpredictable, since Greer and colleagues (2018), a meta-analysis of 54 studies, found task ambiguity strengthening hierarchy's positive effects; their hierarchy is within teams, and ambiguity is not environmental unpredictability.
• Environmental complexity. Our judgment: partial simple and moderate, fits complex, premised on radical decentralization and the bounded-rationality rule of Burton and Obel (2004), the most developed scholarly fit model. A limit here and on uncertainty: Pennings (1975), a quantitative field test of the structural-contingency model, found that environment and structure fit did not explain effectiveness; Donaldson (2001) traces such early failures to methodological limitations.
• Munificence and hostility. Our judgment, contested. On Burton and Obel's rules, partial throughout: decentralized authority reacts fast, but threat pulls toward recentralizing, and the rules do not settle which wins. Covin and Slevin (1989), a survey of 161 small manufacturers, found organic structures doing best in hostile environments and mechanistic ones in benign environments: fits hostile, partial neutral, strain munificent, in our reading. Saerom Lee (2022), a quantitative study of many start-ups in one industry, concludes that a few levels of managers can help start-ups survive hostile environments, which it did not vary: strain hostile, partial elsewhere, in our reading. They agree only at neutral.
• Diversity. Our judgment: partial single business, fits related, partial unrelated. Haier's micro-enterprises spanned core and edge businesses (Jing and colleagues); nothing read covers ventures sharing only ownership.
• Strategy. Our judgment: strain defender, since Burton and Obel name low centralization a misfit for it; partial analyzer and prospector. Saerom Lee's flatter start-ups gained creative success but failed commercially, cutting both ways for a prospector.
• Technology. Theory, contested three ways. Greer and colleagues: fits routine and mixed, partial nonroutine. Martela (2019), a conceptual argument holding the form viable for tailored outputs and expert, motivated staff: partial routine, fits mixed and nonroutine. Bunderson and Boumgarden (2010), a field study of many teams in one firm, on structure aiding self-managed teams with stable tasks: partial routine and nonroutine, fits mixed. They meet at mixed. A limit: technology bore weakly on structure in Hickson, Pugh, and Pheysey (1969), a multi-organization comparative survey, and Mohr (1971), a quantitative field study of technology and structure, found no support for effectiveness depending on their match, though Donaldson reports later studies of the job unpredictability Mohr studied finding positive evidence.
• Interdependence. Theory, contested. Martela argues for low interdependence between units, and Mahringer and Danner-Schröder (2025), one ethnographic case study, saw shared resources create interdependencies that challenged autonomy: fits pooled, partial sequential and reciprocal. Greer and colleagues found task interdependence within teams leaving hierarchy's net harm unchanged: fits throughout. Their overlap is pooled.
• Knowledge intensity, global integration, and local responsiveness. Our judgment: partial throughout. Nurses, software developers, and tomato processors run it (Martela and Nandram; Puranam and Håkonsson; Burton and colleagues; Hamel), but no work ties it to these factors.

What it does well

Martela (2019), a conceptual argument, holds that peer accountability, transparency, and bottom-up emergence solve the basic problems of organizing.

The favorable quantitative evidence concerns teams, mostly inside conventional firms. Cohen and Ledford (1994), a quasi-experiment in one company, found, on the balance of evidence, self-managing teams more effective than comparable traditionally managed groups doing the same work. Seibert, Wang, and Courtright (2011), a meta-analysis of empowerment studies, tied team empowerment, a perceived state, not a structure, to team performance; for self-managing teams, high autonomy with low monitoring could hurt performance (Langfred 2004, a quantitative study of 71 student self-managing teams). Wall and colleagues (1986), a long-term quasi-experiment in one company, found a lasting gain in intrinsic satisfaction, and productivity rising through the elimination of supervisory positions.

Kelly (1978), a critical reanalysis of several published case studies, found the groups' autonomy subordinate to economic objectives and pay incentives seriously underestimated. In Héthy (1986), a comparative review of official reports and published surveys from several countries, socialist brigades' autonomy was far smaller than the regulations allowed and productivity gains averaged 1% to 2%. Adler and Cole (1993), an ungraded article by two management scholars, judged NUMMI's standardized work better for organizational learning than Uddevalla's autonomous groups; Berggren (1992), six case studies in the Swedish auto industry by one scholar, had argued a year earlier for the Swedish long-cycle groups on productivity and quality of work.

What it costs

Managerial work is redistributed, not removed. Reaktor's teams could not take on all ten managerial functions, so the firm built roles each holding one narrow slice of a middle manager's authority (Martela and colleagues 2026).

Maier and colleagues (2026) find monitoring, graduated sanctions, conflict resolution, and balancing contributions with rewards need the most care.

Conflict can undo a team's design: in Langfred (2007), a longitudinal study of 35 teams, more conflict went with lower trust, which may reduce individual autonomy and loosen task interdependence.

Execution can pay for creativity. In flatter start-ups, direction overwhelmed managers and subordinates drifted into power struggles and aimless exploration (Saerom Lee 2022). In Wall and colleagues' plant, turnover rose while motivation and performance did not change.

How it fails

Each Coordination Failures link is our judgment.

Degree

Managers take back what they handed downHierarchy lives on informallyPeer control tightens the cageTeams thrive while the seams failThe design drifts back toward hierarchyJurisdictional gap or overlapAuthority-gradient suppressionCollective sensemaking lock-inLocal optimization against the global constraintNormalization of deviance and practical drift

Managers take back what they handed downHierarchy lives on informallyPeer control tightens the cageTeams thrive while the seams failThe design drifts back toward hierarchyJurisdictional gap or overlapAuthority-gradient suppressionCollective sensemaking lock-inLocal optimization against the global constraintNormalization of deviance and practical drift

How many ties the failure has. Highest: Managers take back what they handed downHierarchy lives on informallyPeer control tightens the cageTeams thrive while the seams failThe design drifts back toward hierarchyJurisdictional gap or overlapAuthority-gradient suppressionCollective sensemaking lock-inLocal optimization against the global constraintNormalization of deviance and practical drift

Select a failure to read its place in the network.Managers take back what they handed down. Degree 1Hierarchy lives on informally. Degree 1Peer control tightens the cage. Degree 2Teams thrive while the seams fail. Degree 1The design drifts back toward hierarchy. Degree 1Jurisdictional gap or overlap. Degree 1Authority-gradient suppression. Degree 2Collective sensemaking lock-in. Degree 1Local optimization against the global constraint. Degree 1Normalization of deviance and practical drift. Degree 1

Failure	Degree
Managers take back what they handed down	1
Hierarchy lives on informally	1
Peer control tightens the cage	2
Teams thrive while the seams fail	1
The design drifts back toward hierarchy	1
Jurisdictional gap or overlap	1
Authority-gradient suppression	2
Collective sensemaking lock-in	1
Local optimization against the global constraint	1
Normalization of deviance and practical drift	1

Five failure modes name five patterns, and authority-gradient suppression is named twice: by hierarchy living on informally and by peer control tightening the cage.

Source: Foss 2003, one case study; Maurer and colleagues 2023, one case study; Picard and Islam 2020, one case study; Freeman 1972; Diefenbach and Sillince 2011, a conceptual analysis; Barker 1993, one ethnographic case study; Annosi and colleagues 2017, several case studies in one company; Fuhrich 2019, one case study; Jensen and Mikkelsen 2024, one case study; Lee 2024, one ethnographic case study.

Managers take back what they handed down (jurisdictional gap or overlap). At Oticon, meddling with delegated rights caused a severe loss of motivation (Foss 2003, one case study).

Hierarchy lives on informally (authority-gradient suppression). After one firm moved toward self-management, communication depended less on formal hierarchy, but former high-ranking employees, though they lost centrality, stayed more central than others (Maurer, Bach, and Oertel 2023, one case study). In a Belgian bank department, followers' intense attachment to a liberating leader came with exhaustion, pressure to be overly happy, and scapegoated contrarian managers (Picard and Islam 2020, one case study). Freeman (1972), an essay, warned of informal elites, and Diefenbach and Sillince (2011), a conceptual analysis, find network organizations much less hierarchy-free than their labels suggest.

Peer control tightens the cage (authority-gradient suppression; collective sensemaking lock-in). Barker (1993), one ethnographic case study, found team-made value rules controlling workers more completely than bureaucracy had. Annosi and colleagues (2017), several case studies in one company, found managerial and stakeholder interventions made self-managed teams' identity isomorphic to the organization's. In four Volkswagen work groups given control over their work, members acted as rationalizers and pressed to remove weaker members; under intergroup competition, one group split into factions and its weaker members were bullied (Fuhrich 2019, one case study).

Teams thrive while the seams fail (local optimization against the global constraint). In a public-sector rehabilitation center, teams improved within while conflict and disidentification between them at times made work impossible (Jensen and Mikkelsen 2024, one case study).

The design drifts back toward hierarchy (normalization of deviance and practical drift). The practices holding authority in place are cognitively, emotionally, and temporally demanding, so hard to sustain (Lee 2024, one ethnographic case study).

Its contested centralization, on the decentralized view, fires two misfit rules: authority spread wide misfits a defender and an analyzer that does not innovate. None of the rules names this form. The defender rule is contested: Mintzberg (1980), a synthesis of earlier research, offering propositions without a new test, places the professional bureaucracy's extensive decentralization in complex but stable environments. The analyzer rule is undisputed, but the middle-band view sets neither off, so both flag the row; neither sinks it. Burton and Obel's (2004) propositions are untested singly; Burton, Lauridsen, and Obel (2002), a quantitative study of 224 Danish small and medium-sized firms, tested an earlier version as a set, finding lower return on assets with misfits. Limits: the interaction form of fit was unsupported in a quantitative study of 629 work units in two states' employment security agencies (Drazin and Van de Ven 1985), and in a survey of 3,259 respondents in 1,904 companies, firms in perfect institutional fit slightly lost performance striving for contingency fit (Volberda and colleagues 2012).

What the research found

Most studies of the form are single cases or argument.

Foss and Dobrajska (2015), a conceptual argument, doubt that Valve (Puranam and Håkonsson 2015, one case description) is a new blueprint; Zenger (2015) finds the evidence silent on whether its design causes its high revenue per employee.

Getz (2009), a field study of eighteen companies by one researcher, chose fifteen that had adopted the F-form, so it shows what adopters' leaders did, not how often adoption succeeds. Greer and colleagues (2018), a meta-analysis covering 13,914 teams, found hierarchy within teams slightly lowering performance and viability, which they read as largely supporting dysfunctional views of hierarchy. Foss and Klein (2022) argue for managers at the firm level; the pairing is ours. Martela, Mäkkeli, and Kostamo (online September 2026), one case study of Reaktor, and Maier and colleagues (June 2026, outside the eight journals searched) are the most recent studies recorded.

Martela (2019) calls the form novel; Puranam, Alexy, and Reitzig (2014), a conceptual argument, hold that even where existing theory explains a new form's single elements, new theory may lie in their bundles. Foss and Klein, a book-length argument, hold against Martela that authority and hierarchy are needed to coordinate work. Adler and Borys (1996), a conceptual argument, answer claims that bureaucracy is obsolete: formalization can enable, not only constrain.

The evidence ledger holds 35 studies filed under this form.

In practice: one published case

Foss (2003), "Selective intervention and internal hybrids: interpreting and learning from the rise and decline of the Oticon spaghetti organization," in Organization Science, is one case study of Oticon, the hearing aids producer.

At the beginning of the 1990s Oticon became famous for its spaghetti organization, a radical internal hybrid that infused the hierarchy with elements of market control. The aim was to raise entrepreneurialism and motivation.

By about a decade later, the spaghetti organization had given way to a more traditional matrix organization.

A strong liability of the spaghetti organization, in its author's conclusion, was an incentive problem, the difficulty of credibly committing managers not to intervene in decisions they had delegated. Frequent managerial meddling with delegated rights led to a severe loss of motivation and, Foss concludes, arguably caused the change to a more structured organization.

The source is one case study, and we read it in its abstract. The search, through Crossref and the web, covered published cases: Oticon; Zappos and holacracy; Morning Star; Valve; GitHub; Buurtzorg; and Haier's rendanheyi. Several of these, and an unnamed organization (Lee 2024), were recorded as studies instead. Oticon was chosen because the source traces both the rise and the reversal.

Source: Foss 2003. Selective intervention and internal hybrids: interpreting and learning from the rise and decline of the Oticon spaghetti organization, Organization Science 14(3), 331 to 349; one case study.

Variants and near relatives

Holacracy (Robertson 2015, practitioner lore): circles and roles under a written constitution. Its lead and rep links match, in our comparison, sociocracy's double linking, taught under the Linking-pin organization.

Teal organization (Laloux 2014, practitioner lore): self-management, wholeness, and evolutionary purpose.

Morning Star (Hamel 2011): colleagues negotiate yearly letters of understanding in place of bosses.

Haier's rendanheyi (Hamel and Zanini 2018, a practitioner article; Frynas, Mol, and Mellahi 2018, one case study; Jing and colleagues 2016): some 4,000 microenterprises, whose market-facing units can hire and fire internal suppliers or contract outside; priced dealing between owned units is, in our reading, the Internal market organization's move.

Buurtzorg (Laloux 2014; Kreitzer and colleagues 2015): small self-managing nurse teams, a thin back office, and coaches.

Valve (Puranam and Håkonsson 2015): a games company that, by its own handbook, has no managers.

Oticon's spaghetti organization (Foss 2003; Kolind 2015, an insider's practitioner account), partly reversed. The accounts disagree: Foss reads a hierarchy infused with elements of market control, the Internal market organization's Internal hybrid; Kolind says Oticon dropped bosses, titles, departments, and most of its bureaucracy.

Semco (Semler 1989): most employees set their hours, all can see the books, most vote on many important decisions, and managers set their own pay.

Lattice organization (Shipper and Manz 1992): W. L. Gore's many leaders and no bosses, without formally designated teams.

Liberated company (Getz 2009; Poli and Gabriel 2024): its literature centers the leader's removal of control, not a written rule system.

Conversational firm (Turco 2016, one ethnographic case study): dialogue opened across a hierarchy that stays. Lee and Edmondson treat this as less hierarchical but not self-managing, the line between a say in decisions and the authority to make them.

The Team-based organization, the nearest neighbor, builds teams beneath managers who stay; this form removes the manager-subordinate relationship.

A relative: the Cooperative organization's Labor-managed (self-managed) firm, run by its workers' council, gives final authority to members, not to roles and written rules.

It takes the manager-subordinate reporting relationship out of the formal structure altogether and puts authority in roles and explicit rules, where the team-based form keeps managers above its teams.

Self-managing organization (less-hierarchical forms)

Adjust to each other directlyMMutual adjustment

Team-based organization

Reports toAdjust to each other directlyMMutual adjustment

1. 1The self-managing form takes the manager-subordinate reporting line out of its formal structure and puts authority in roles under written rules; the team-based form keeps management teams over its work teams.
2. 2The self-managing form groups work by roles in a circle, by project, or by agreement between colleagues, its primary unit differing by design, and the team-based form groups its teams into business units.

Differs on 4 of 11 dimensions

• Basis of grouping Function or process and product or purpose; Team-based organization: Product or purpose
• Specialization Medium; Team-based organization: Low to medium
• Layers and span of control Flat; Team-based organization: Flat to moderate
• Mode of exchange and control Market; Team-based organization: Bureaucracy and clan

Many decisions move to the people doing the work in both forms. The self-managing organization removes the manager-subordinate relationship from the formal structure, while the team-based form keeps managers and builds teams beneath them.

Source: Lee and Edmondson 2017, a review of the literature; Robertson 2015; Hamel 2011; Mohrman and colleagues 1995.

Moving into or out of it

Decentralization is ongoing, not a one-time structural change (Lee 2024, one ethnographic case study), and leadership roles are shared out in stages (Poli and Gabriel 2024, one case study).

Sources differ on supervisors: Batt (2004), a regression study of about 1,200 employees in one company, found team workers reporting more discretion, security, and satisfaction and supervisors the opposite, while Manz and Sims (1987), a study of one plant, suggest a legitimate external leader's role, unlike traditional leadership.

Moving out: Oticon and GitHub both reverted toward hierarchy (Foss 2003; Burton and colleagues 2017). Converting is harder than founding, in our judgment, though inertia's effects may vary by type of change.

The running of the reorganization falls to Change & Transformation.

The thinking behind it

Michael Y. Lee and Amy C. Edmondson (2017): radical decentralization of authority. Lee (2024): why designs drift back.

Nicolai J. Foss (2003): selective intervention; with Peter G. Klein (2022), why managers matter.

Frank Martela (2019): a novel form; with Sharda Nandram (2025), Buurtzorg's scaling. Phanish Puranam, Oliver Alexy, and Markus Reitzig (2014): novelty in bundles.

James R. Barker (1993): concertive control. Jo Freeman (1972): structurelessness breeds informal elites. Todd R. Zenger (2015): Valve as internal markets. Catherine J. Turco (2016): the conversational firm. Isaac Getz (2009): the F-form.

Practitioner lore: Brian J. Robertson (2015), holacracy; Frederic Laloux (2014), teal; Gary Hamel (2011), Morning Star; and Ricardo Semler (1989), Semco. Richard M. Burton and Børge Obel (2004): the multi-contingency model and its misfit rules.

Also called

Less-hierarchical organization. Bossless organization, the term Foss and Klein argue against. Humanocracy, a practitioner term. Self-organizing (Martela 2019).

Works cited

• Adler and Borys 1996. Two types of bureaucracy: enabling and coercive, Administrative Science Quarterly 41(1), from p. 61; a conceptual argument with no new test.
• Adler and Cole 1993. Designed for learning: a tale of two auto plants, Sloan Management Review (Spring 1993), 85 to 94.
• Ahrne and Brunsson 2008. Meta-organizations, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham.
• Amburgey and colleagues 1993. Resetting the clock: the dynamics of organizational change and failure, Administrative Science Quarterly 38(1), from p. 51; a quantitative study of organizational change and failure rates.
• Annosi and colleagues 2017. The interaction of control systems and stakeholder networks in shaping the identities of self-managed teams, Organization Studies 38(5), 619 to 645; several case studies in one company.
• Aoki 1986. Horizontal vs. vertical information structure of the firm, American Economic Review 76(5), 971 to 983; a formal economic model.
• Armour and Teece 1978. Organizational structure and economic performance: a test of the multidivisional hypothesis, Bell Journal of Economics 9(1), 106 to 122; a multi-firm statistical study in one industry.
• Ashkenas and colleagues 1995. The Boundaryless Organization: Breaking the Chains of Organizational Structure, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco.
• Barker 1993. Tightening the iron cage: concertive control in self-managing teams, Administrative Science Quarterly 38(3), 408 to 437; one ethnographic case study.
• Batt 2004. Who benefits from teams? Comparing workers, supervisors, and managers, Industrial Relations 43(1), 183 to 212; a regression study of about 1,200 employees in one company.
• Berggren 1992. Alternatives to Lean Production: Work Organization in the Swedish Auto Industry, ILR Press, Ithaca, NY; six case studies in the Swedish auto industry by one scholar.
• Brandstätter and Graf-Vlachy 2026. Strategic leadership and organizational design: a review and research agenda, Journal of Organization Design 15(3), 165 to 210.
• Braverman 1974. Labor and monopoly capital: the degradation of work in the twentieth century, Monthly Review Press, New York; the linked publisher's page is the 1998 twenty-fifth anniversary edition.
• Bunderson and Boumgarden 2010. Structure and learning in self-managed teams: why 'bureaucratic' teams can be better learners, Organization Science 21(3), 609 to 624; a field study of many teams in one firm.
• Burdín 2014. Are worker-managed firms more likely to fail than conventional enterprises? Evidence from Uruguay, ILR Review 67(1), 202 to 238; a survival study of many firms in one country.
• Burns and Stalker 1961. The Management of Innovation, Tavistock Publications, London (first edition 1961); the DOI is for the Oxford University Press revised edition of 1994; a field study of twenty firms.
• Burton and colleagues 2002. Return on assets loss from situational and contingency misfits, Management Science 48(11), 1461 to 1485; a quantitative study of 224 Danish small and medium-sized firms.
• Burton and colleagues 2017. GitHub: exploring the space between boss-less and hierarchical forms of organizing, Journal of Organization Design 6(1); one case description.
• Burton and colleagues 2020a. Organizational design: a step-by-step approach (fourth edition), Cambridge University Press.
• Burton and Obel 2004. Strategic organizational diagnosis and design: the dynamics of fit, Kluwer Academic Publishers (third edition).
• Carey 1967. The Hawthorne studies: a radical criticism, American Sociological Review 32(3), 403 to 416.
• Carney and colleagues 2011. Business group affiliation, performance, context, and strategy: a meta-analysis, Academy of Management Journal 54(3), 437 to 460; a meta-analysis of 141 studies in 28 countries.
• Carroll and Hannan 2000. The demography of corporations and industries, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.
• Chandler 1962. Strategy and Structure: Chapters in the History of the Industrial Enterprise, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA (xiv and 463 pages); several independent case histories by a historian.
• Child 1972a. Organizational structure, environment and performance: the role of strategic choice, Sociology 6(1), 1 to 22.
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