Aimee Groth, Business Insider
According to a recent paper from Harvard Business School professor Julie Wulf (via Organizations and Markets), one of those claims just doesn't really hold up. Flattened firms actually push more control to the top.
We discovered that flattening has occurred, but it is not what it is widely assumed to be. In line with the conventional view of flattening, we find that
CEOs at flattened firms end up doing more, not less, make more decisions, and centralize more functions. Lower level managers are also paid less, indicating less responsibility. Beyond failing to deliver on its promise of alleged benefits, Wulf argues that this finding has further negative implications:
A manager may flatten structure to push decisions down and then hire and develop division managers suited to “being the boss.” But if flattening actually pushes decisions up, the division managers are now out of sync with the organization: They don’t have autonomy to make decisions and there is a mismatch between managerial talent and decision rights.
For flattening and delayering to actually work in the way it's conventionally presented, it has to be more than a cosmetic change. It doesn't democratize an organization if decision-making power ends up at the top.
When the tactic's sold from the top as empowering, managers and employees should be skeptical of both motivation and eventual results.
Find the full paper here
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