I am going out on a limb here and make a totally unsupported guess: Elliott Jaques’s Requisite Organization Hierarchies can be interpreted as Networks. I think that the reason everyone has been talking about Markets, Hierarchies and Networks as separate classes has to do with how the first two have been implemented and written about in the last 100-200 years. …
Does Social Network Analysis Simply Show You Work Levels at Work?
Art Kleiner has an interesting piece about Professor Karen Stephenson, the guru of social network analysis, entitled “The Quantum Theory of Trust“. It’s part of the same strategy+business series where he profiled Elliott Jaques’s requisite organization and felt fair pay work, which I’ve mentioned before. His work is always interesting and you may want to check out the rest of …
Hierarchy versus Emergence in Organizations
Hierarchies are emergent phenomena. One of the things that has bothered me with the several “postmodern” discussions about organizational life has been the disregard for hierarchies often expressed by them. Flat oranizations are superior to hierarchical ones, they say, because inforrmation and knowledge flows more freely between equals. I agree that information and knowledge flows better between equals but I …