Holacratic Workplaces
Traditionally, companies structure their organizations in hierarchies, where seniority and job title determine who can call the shots and have the final say in influencing the direction of the company. Some companies, however, are moving away from this organizational structure in an effort to minimize the bureaucracy of the workplace, create more role flexibility, and allow any employee to present and drive new ideas regardless of their position. Zappos, for instance, has gotten rid of titles and the position of “manager” entirely. Company structures of this nature are called “holacracies,” and give everyone a voice in the decision-making process and autonomy to work on what they feel is valuable. But are either of these systems better than the other?
If we model these two structures as networks, the traditional company structure falls into a hierarchy with chains of employees connected adjacently down it by seniority with more tightly connected networks at each level, but few connections between these clusters. The holacracy instead has larger clusters that encompass an entire area of the company (e.g. Legal, Business, Development), where employees are connected to many more of the members within their group. In other words, the holacracy is a much flatter and connected network than the hierarchy. While both of these networks should have paths to every other node in the network, the holacracy benefits from having shorter paths since it is more interconnected, especially within departments. This suggests that communication and collaboration between employees may be more efficient. However, having so many more connections creates more opportunity for instability. Since increased connections make more triads in the network, there is a higher chance that there could be relationships that violate the Structural Balance Property, which suggests that this kind of workplace could be more volatile. In the hierarchical network, only your immediate connections need to satisfy the SBP, although relationships with the right people (i.e. superiors) may work as bottlenecks for the productivity of branches. In conclusion, there seems to be merit for both systems, however, we will need to see more examples in practice to make any firm decisions on what is the best practice for comapanies.