Self-managing organizations: Exploring the limits of less-hierarchical organizing

Fascination with organizations that eschew the conventional managerial hierarchy and instead radically decentralize authority has been longstanding, albeit at the margins of scholarly and practitioner attention. Recently, however, organizational experiments in radical decentralization have gained ma...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Research in organizational behavior Vol. 37; pp. 35 - 58
Main Authors: Lee, Michael Y., Edmondson, Amy C.
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Elsevier Ltd 2017
Subjects:
Decentralization
Flat organizations
Hierarchy
Humanistic management
Organization design
Organizational democracy
Post-bureacratic organizations
Self-management
Hierarchy
Humanistic management
Organizational democracy
Self-management
Decentralization
Flat organizations
Organization design
Post-bureacratic organizations
ISSN:0191-3085, 2468-1741
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Fascination with organizations that eschew the conventional managerial hierarchy and instead radically decentralize authority has been longstanding, albeit at the margins of scholarly and practitioner attention. Recently, however, organizational experiments in radical decentralization have gained mainstream consideration, giving rise to a need for new theory and new research. This paper reviews the literature on less-hierarchical organizing and identifies three categories of research: post-bureaucratic organizations, humanistic management and organizational democracy. Despite this extensive prior work, scholarly understanding of radical decentralization remains limited. Using the term self-managing organizations to capture efforts that radically decentralize authority in a formal and systematic way throughout the organization, we set forth a research agenda to better understand less-hierarchical organizing at its limits.
ISSN:0191-3085
2468-1741
DOI:10.1016/j.riob.2017.10.002