Title: Flat hierarchies: do you understand the pros and cons?
Headings: Flat hierarchies: do you understand the pros and cons?
Flat hierarchies: do you understand the pros and cons?
Flat hierarchies: a general definition
Flat hierarchies: what are the pros?
Communication is clearer and less susceptible to degradation
Decisions can be made faster and closer to the point of impact
Labour costs are reduced due to fewer higher-paid middle managers
Increased autonomy and empowerment is motivating to employees
Innovation can happen informally and more quickly
Flat hierarchies: what are the cons?
Informal, dysfunctional hierarchies may take the place of formal ones
A lack of supervision and oversight means it’s harder to track productivity
Bureaucratic coordination is slow or impossible to scale
Responsibility and accountability become diffused
Horizontal promotions may not sufficiently motivate people

Content: One of which was that for larger initiatives it was difficult and time-consuming to get alignment across teams. This process could also be divisive and disruptive, they added. This is why some scholars suggest flat hierarchies work for small-to-medium sized organisations. But that once organisations get larger and more bureaucratic, relying on collective buy-in and decision-making can be too slow to move the whole machine as one. Responsibility and accountability become diffused
Flat hierarchies tend to suffer from diffusion of responsibility. Everyone is less likely to take responsibility because there are others present and because it’s not clear who has overall responsibility for performance. Employees are more likely to be generalists in some variants of flat hierarchies. For example, doing a bit of everything, which again dilutes responsibility because clear lines of focus and responsibility are absent. On the flip-side, for some employees, a lack of clear lines of responsibility can lead to worse work-life balance. This is due to feeling responsible for everything and pick up the slack when others don’t pull their weight.