bob_32_116

... which is more or less an admission that some kind of leadership is necessary.

Here's my theory about "flat structures": they are an attempt to counter the perception - justified or not - by some workers that they are just a cog in a wheel with no real participation in the organisation. Someone has an idea "Things would work better if we did this procedure this way" and they put it forward to, say, their immediate boss, but for one reason or another it never reaches the person making the decisions, or if it does it gets dismissed.

The theory goes that good ideas would have a better chance of being heard and acted upon if they were presented face to face, say at an oval table discussion like the one depicted above. However it still requires that managers actually are receptive to the concept of one of their subordinates having a nice idea that might be worth trying. In many cases thereis an ego problem. They may feel subconsciously that "I'm this guy's boss, if his opinions are considereed to equal validity with mine, maybe somewhere down the track people will say his salary should be the same as mine."

I'm all for meetings that are held in the right spirit, with genuine communication that's not ego-driven. However that's not the same as a "democracy". A company in which things are decided by majority vote would not work. Managers have more rights than their subordinates for the simple reason that they have more responsibilities. To go back to my analogy of renovating a house, I may choose to accept advice from the builder, but one could not have a situation where all the employees on site held a vote on whether to install that extra room or not. If a bad decision is made, it's me who has to live with the result; those guys have lost nothing.

OccultHawk

It depends on the business. I'm familiar a bicycle co-op that's not only democratic but everyone has an equal say and functions entirely through a system of consensus. I've heard the phrase "consensus building" used to mean agree with the boss or GTFO and I don't mean that. I'm talking about Quaker meeting true consensus where ANY dissenting view will boycott the idea. Everyone has to agree to everything. It's, in fact, an extremely popular and succesful business.

Isbjørn

There's a difference between a boss, who holds significant power over his subordinates, and a democratically chosen leader, who is responsible to the workers in the cooperative and can be replaced at their demand.

That's something else entirely. In this case, the service produced is not up for discussion, and its details are determined by the one who buys it - the homeowner.

Except that they do.

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innerspaceboy

And with that, we've gone the way of Finnegan.

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