Small businesses often grow large enough that the owner needs to appoint or hire staff members to oversee other employees. For many decades, the easiest way to organize a small business was to follow ...

Companies with hierarchical structures are efficient and well-coordinated, because the lines of authority are clear. In the modern marketplace, quick adaptability to changing conditions and varying ...

Flat organizations reduce management layers to boost communication, agility and morale, but they may struggle with role clarity and career advancement.

Every organization, no matter its size, has an abundance of moving pieces. Ensuring that all those pieces move in perfect synchrony starts by devising an organizational structure that represents the ...

Hailed as the anti-hierarchy, holacracy is the new business buzzword. Developed by Ternary Software CEO Brian Robertson in 2007, at its most basic holacracy is a self-governing operating system where ...

The interconnected world means organizations rely less and less on traditional pyramid structures, but more on collaboration. This ideal represents the nature of leadership in a flat organization. An ...

In my 20s, I wanted to overthrow hierarchies at work. When I would see bad leadership, I blamed the hierarchy—structures where certain people have more power or influence than others, forcing us into ...

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