It's rare to see an organization that isn't structured around some kind of hierarchy. Many feel that this is a detriment to having a strong company culture. Last year, a study was published on that very topic:
Are less hierarchical firms organized around stronger cultures? Evidence from big data.
The study was based on 1.5 million employee reviews on Glassdoor from 23,000 US-based firms, alongside data on managerial hierarchy estimated from 42 million professional social media profiles.
They state the following in their summary:
"Our findings confirm a negative association between managerial hierarchy and organizational culture strength."
And further:
"Our analysis of 1.5 million Glassdoor employee reviews and 42 million professional profiles from 23,000 U.S. firms shows that organizations with stronger cultures do indeed have a lower fraction of managers to total employees. This suggests that attempts to “flatten” hierarchies by eliminating layers of managers is more likely to succeed if accompanied by efforts to build strong cultures, through mechanisms such as careful selection and socialization of workers."
The only flaw that I can see in their methods is the fact that they're 'estimating' managerial hierarchy based on social media profiles. I suppose there could be some room for error there, but maybe not much. Whatever the case, it's an interesting concept to look into.
Now on to this week's hand-picked productivity links!
