Title: Flat Organizational Structures
Work: The Pragmatist’s Guide Book Series by Simone Collins and Malcolm Collins Full Text for LLMs and AI
Citation: TPG 43.1
Words: 396
Source: https://technopuritan.com/the-pragmatists-guide-book-series-by-simone-collins-and-malcolm-collins-full-text-for-llms-and-ai/
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## Flat Organizational Structures

Let’s start by focusing on the traditional antithesis of hierarchical organizations: The flat organizational structure. Flat organizational structures can sound like the dream organizational system to a person currently living under a hierarchical structure because they address the most acute pain points of a hierarchy by granting almost equal institutional power to most everyone in the organization.

These organizational systems are extremely susceptible to being supplanted by simplistic dominance hierarchies as described near the beginning of the book. When you remove a power hierarchy from a governance structure, human nature will cause a *new* power hierarchy to form without any interest in the organization’s purpose or desired outcomes.

This problem is exacerbated in high-power-distance cultures. These are cultures where naturally occurring dominance hierarchies are more strict in their unidirectionality, making those in high positions feel more distant from their immediate subordinates.

As such, maintaining a flat power structure in high-power-distance culture requires some element of social engineering. A great example of this can be seen in the South Korean company Kakao, which fortifies its flat organizational structure by having its employees only use English names for each other. As American culture features lower power distances than South Korean culture, this helps to unmoor employees from their day-to-day social schemas. South Korean Airlines classically had one of the highest crash rates of any airline and it was partially attributable to this high power distance culture, with black boxes after some crashes showing co-pilots clearly expressing discomfort with the senior pilots’ decisions but unable to communicate this in a way that changed action.[[19]](#_ftn19)

Are flat organizational structures good? While the best perform better, most are worse. Flat organizational structures require a company to be composed entirely of emotionally mature, non-power hungry, non-ideologically infected[[20]](#_ftn20) B-players and above. Flat organizational structures will not protect participants from authoritarian-like rule. If anything, they are more susceptible to it as they give anyone with an authoritarian bone in their body and a bit of charisma the chance to try it out (whereas in more hierarchical companies, only those in senior positions must overcome the temptation).

Well-functioning, flat organizational structures are most likely to emerge in industries where almost everyone is at the absolute top of their game and totally mission-focused (for example, in some top-tier startups). In most other circumstances, attempts to implement this format yield disappointing results.