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Hierarchical Organization

A hierarchical organization is structured like a pyramid, with a single entity or small group at the top holding the most power and authority over subsequent levels of management. Most large organizations, including governments and religions, follow a hierarchical model. However, some critics argue that hierarchies inherently concentrate power and can become incompetent over time as responsibilities are delegated down levels of management. Alternatives like heterarchies and wirearchies have been proposed to allow for more flexible structures and greater sharing of information and decision-making across levels.

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41 views

Hierarchical Organization

A hierarchical organization is structured like a pyramid, with a single entity or small group at the top holding the most power and authority over subsequent levels of management. Most large organizations, including governments and religions, follow a hierarchical model. However, some critics argue that hierarchies inherently concentrate power and can become incompetent over time as responsibilities are delegated down levels of management. Alternatives like heterarchies and wirearchies have been proposed to allow for more flexible structures and greater sharing of information and decision-making across levels.

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ewu321
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Hierarchical Organization

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A hierarchical organization is an organizational structure where every entity in
the organization, except one, is subordinate to a single other entity. This
arrangement is a form of a hierarchy. In an organization, the hierarchy usually
consists of a singular/group of power at the top with subsequent levels of power
beneath them. This is the dominant mode of organization among large
organizations; most corporations, governments, and organized religions are
hierarchical organizations with different levels of management, power or
authority. For example, the broad, top-level overview of the general
organization of the Catholic Church consists of the Pope, then the Cardinals,
then the Archbishops, and so on.

Members of hierarchical organizational structures chiefly communicate with


their immediate superior and with their immediate subordinates. Structuring
organizations in this way is useful partly because it can reduce the
communication overhead by limiting information flow; this is also its major
limitation.

Visualization

A hierarchy is typically visualized as a pyramid, where the height of the ranking


or person depicts their power status and the width of that level represents how
many people or business divisions are at that level relative to the wholethe
highest-ranking people are at the apex, and there are very few of them; the base
may include thousands of people who have no subordinates. These hierarchies
are typically depicted with a tree or triangle diagram, creating an organizational
chart or organigram. Those nearest the top have more power than those nearest
the bottom, and there being fewer people at the top than at the bottom. As a

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result, superiors in a hierarchy generally have higher status and command
greater rewards than their subordinates. ...

Common models

All governments and most companies have similar structures. Traditionally, the
monarch was the pinnacle of the state. In many countries, feudalism and
manorialism provided a formal social structure that established hierarchical
links at every level of society, with the monarch at the top.

In modern post-feudal states the nominal top of the hierarchy still remains the
head of state, which may be a president or a constitutional monarch, although in
many modern states the powers of the head of state are delegated among
different bodies. Below the head, there is commonly a senate, parliament or
congress, which in turn often delegate the day-to-day running of the country to a
prime minister. In many democracies, the people are considered to be the
notional top of the hierarchy, over the head of state; in reality, the people's
power is restricted to voting in elections.

In business, the business owner traditionally occupied the pinnacle of the


organization. In most modern large companies, there is now no longer a single
dominant shareholder, and the collective power of the business owners is for
most purposes delegated to a board of directors, which in turn delegates the day-
to-day running of the company to a managing director or CEO. Again, although
the shareholders of the company are the nominal top of the hierarchy, in reality
many companies are run at least in part as personal fiefdoms by their

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management; corporate governance rules are an attempt to mitigate this
tendency.

Studies

The organizational development theorist Elliott Jacques identified a special role


for hierarchy in his concept of requisite organization.

The iron law of oligarchy, introduced by Robert Michels, describes the


inevitable tendency of hierarchical organizations to become oligarchic in their
decision making.

Hierarchiology is the term coined by Dr. Laurence J. Peter, originator of the


Peter Principle described in his humorous book of the same name, to refer to the
study of hierarchical organizations and the behavior of their members.

Having formulated the Principle, I discovered that I had inadvertently founded a


new science, hierarchiology, the study of hierarchies. The term hierarchy was
originally used to describe the system of church government by priests graded
into ranks. The contemporary meaning includes any organization whose
members or employees are arranged in order of rank, grade or class.
Hierarchiology, although a relatively recent discipline, appears to have great
applicability to the fields of public and private administration.

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Dr. Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull, The Peter Principle: Why Things
Always Go Wrong

The IRG Solution hierarchical incompetence and how to overcome it argued


that hierarchies were inherently incompetent, and were only able to function due
to large amounts of informal lateral communication fostered by private informal
networks.

Criticism and alternatives

In the work of diverse theorists such as William James (18421910), Michel


Foucault (19261984) and Hayden White, important critiques of hierarchical
epistemology are advanced. James famously asserts in his work "Radical
Empiricism" that clear distinctions of type and category are a constant but
unwritten goal of scientific reasoning, so that when they are discovered, success
is declared. But if aspects of the world are organized differently, involving
inherent and intractable ambiguities, then scientific questions are often
considered unresolved. A hesitation to declare success upon the discovery of
ambiguities leaves heterarchy at an artificial and subjective disadvantage in the
scope of human knowledge. This bias is an artifact of an aesthetic or
pedagogical preference for hierarchy, and not necessarily an expression of
objective observation.

Hierarchies and hierarchical thinking has been criticized by many people,


including Susan McClary and one political philosophy which is vehemently
opposed to hierarchical organization: anarchism is generally opposed to
hierarchical organization in any form of human relations. Heterarchy is the most

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commonly proposed alternative to hierarchy and this has been combined with
responsible autonomy by Gerard Fairtlough in his work on Triarchy theory.

Amidst constant innovation in information and communication technologies,


hierarchical authority structures are giving way to greater decision-making
latitude for individuals and more flexible definitions of job activities and this
new style of work presents a challenge to existing organizational forms, with
some research studies contrasting traditional organizational forms against
groups that operate as online communities that are characterized by personal
motivation and the satisfaction of making one's own decisions. With all levels of
an organization having access to information and communication via digital
means, power structures align more as a wirearchy, enabling the flow of power
and authority to be based not on hierarchical levels, but on information, trust,
credibility, and a focus on results.

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