But do flat structures work? André Spicer, a professor of organizational behavior at Bayes Business School in London, said that while the “cultural zeitgeist growing up was that hierarchies are bad,” there is a growing recognition of both their necessity and the fact that they often recur in companies that reject them, at least in theory. “People are not just willing to jump on the bandwagon and say, ‘Yeah, let’s have this non-hierarchical structure.’ There is a certain suspicion about it.”
In 2012, Valve’s new hire handbook leaked, revealing its defining characteristic: eschewing managers in favor of an autonomous system where employees can move between projects at will.
But in a 2013 interview, Jeri Ellsworth, a former Valve employee, said that at the company, “there’s actually a hidden layer of powerful management structure in the company and it was a lot like high school.” A 2022 report from People Make Games, a YouTube video game investigative journalism channel, highlighted Valve’s issues with diversity and job rating, among other things. (Neither Ms. Ellsworth nor Valve responded to requests for comment.)
Clifford Oswick, a professor of organizational theory at Bayes, pointed to “inherent risks” of discrimination in companies with extremely flat structures. The companies can reflect the same prejudices as society, with no safeguards to avoid them. This means that often in such companies, Mr. Oswick said, “you still have privileged middle-aged white men making decisions at the top.”
Mr Spicer is particularly critical of start-ups that have tried, or claimed to be trying, flat structures, suggesting that failures – and at least one major scandal – have emerged from these workplaces. He pointed to Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos, her healthcare technology start-up. In a 2015 interview, Ms. Holmes said Theranos was “a very flat organization and if I’ve learned anything, we’re pretty much the worst people on our team.”
