Power and organizations: how organization types link to power relationships—a state of the field

Andreas S. Schuster and Dominik K. Kanbach

International Studies of Management & Organization, 2024, vol. 54, issue 3, 159-181

Abstract: In the last two decades, the call for fewer hierarchies and flat structures has increased tremendously as shown by the numbers of recent papers. Academics and practitioners continually discuss the perfect organizational type. Nevertheless, this discussion is nothing new; already in mid last century, researchers were analyzing softened hierarchies in organizations. Due to the long-standing and recently reignited debates and influences from various perspectives, the body of research is vast, highly fragmented, and distributed among different disciplines. By reviewing the field systematically, we have analyzed in depth the current state of research and thereby interrelate the power relationships between manager and employee with the organization type they work in. With the aid of this newly developed framework, we can show that most companies act in a hierarchical organization not a flat one. Additionally, we show that even in organizations typified by flat structures, hierarchies do nevertheless appear. This revelation supports earlier findings that where formal hierarchies decrease, informal hierarchies increase, but this is contrary to much of current business understanding. Our research contributes to academia by providing a long-needed, integrated framework for power relationships in different types of organizations on the basis of which future scholars can undertake further research.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00208825.2024.2307202 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:mimoxx:v:54:y:2024:i:3:p:159-181

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/mimo20

DOI: 10.1080/00208825.2024.2307202

Access Statistics for this article

International Studies of Management & Organization is currently edited by Abraham Stefanidis

More articles in International Studies of Management & Organization from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().