Research

Enacting Decentralized Authority: The Practices and Limits of Moving Beyond Hierarchy (Provisionally accepted, Administrative Science Quarterly)

Decentralization as an organizing principle has drawn growing interest from scholars and practitioners because of its perceived suitability for contemporary market conditions and alignment with evolving employee work expectations. However, most efforts to decentralize authority face significant obstacles and often end in failure. I propose that existing research on decentralization has struggled to generate insight into how such barriers can be overcome because it has treated decentralization as a static outcome rather than a dynamic and situated achievement that must be continually enacted. In contrast, this paper leverages ethnographic data from a decentralization effort to build theory on the organizational practices that support enactments of decentralized authority. I find that successful enactments of decentralized authority were supported by practices that established clear boundaries of authority and focused collective attention on these boundaries, as well as practices that depersonalized collective attributions of the source of authority. At the same time, the practices were difficult to consistently enact because of their complexity and because they required overcoming ingrained psychological tendencies. These findings reveal both the power and limits of practices that attend to and disrupt the unconscious social psychological processes that pull organizations towards hierarchy. .  

Constitutional Systems of Authority: Enabling Legitimate Centralization in Decentralized Organizations (Revise & Resubmit at Administrative Science Quarterly)

Decentralized organizations face situations where temporary centralization of decision-making is useful or necessary. However, centralization risks undermining the internal legitimacy of the decentralized system. Through a comparative case study of four decentralized organizations that centralized authority during the COVID crisis, we identify two factors that allow decentralized organizations to flexibly centralize without undermining internal legitimacy. First, we find that a set of explicit rules governing both the distribution of authority as well as how authority could be changed facilitates the centralization of decision making while preserving the legitimacy of the broader decentralized system. We conceptualize this set of rules as a constitutional system of authority. The degree of openness and care displayed by leadership in enacting centralized authority serves as a secondary factor that supports perceptions of legitimacy during centralization. This study builds theory regarding the factors that contribute to the durability of decentralized organizing, prompting a reappraisal of decentralized organizing as fragile. Furthermore, this study compels a broadened conceptualization of decentralization that captures not only the distribution of operational authority but also the distribution of rule-making authority. (Co-authored with Trevor Young-Hyman)

Is Flat for Everyone? Investigating Who Thrives and Who Struggles in Decentralized Structures (Preparing for Submission, Academy of Management Journal)

A core argument regarding decentralization is that adopting such structures improves the engagement, satisfaction and commitment of lower-level workers, and in doing so, makes organizations more egalitarian. We propose that decentralization’s impact on the quality of employee work experience varies by an employee’s level of job performance, such that decentralization systematically improves the quality of work experience of high performers but degrades the experience of low performers. We leverage a randomized field experiment with a decentralization treatment inside a single organization to test this proposition and find that the introduction of a decentralized structure improved the engagement, job satisfaction, and intentions to remain in the organization for high performers but negatively impacted the same outcomes for low performers. This analysis suggests that decentralization creates a work environment that benefits some workers but leaves others behind, triggering increased stratification in worker outcomes along some dimensions. The results of this study hold implications for the study of decentralization and its effects, the management of human capital, and the human consequences of the future of work. (Co-authored with Paul Green)

Distance From The Sun: The Centralizing Power of Ambiguity in Less Hierarchical Structures (Manuscript Development)

This project builds off of a 5-year autoethnography of a consulting firm that sought to create a new type of “liberated” firm with no formal ranks or titles, flexible project staffing, a coaching-based evaluation process, and a strong cultural value on intrapreneurship. We found that these organizing choices fostered a level of ambiguity about the rules of the game that the two founding firm partners rationalized as a way to promote a flexible, free, and entrpeprenuerial firm, but that was predominantly experienced by consultants as confusing and anxiety-ridden, and which resulted in a powerful informal social structure where one’s power and status was based on one’s relational closeness with the founding partners and adherence to the firm’s cultural scripts. We investigate the mechanisms and microdynamics by which a set of organizing choices that were intended to minimize power and status hierarchies actually ended up producing a different but equally centralized core-periphery social structure. (Co-authored with Alaric Bougoin and Alexis Laszczuk)

The Role of Hierarchies in Managing Communities: Examining Tensions in the Governance of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (Data Collection)

This project explores the phenomenon of decentralized autonomous organizations, or DAOs, which are a novel form of organizing that utilizes blockchain technology to manage and automate participation by community members in a decentralized fashion. Notably, some firms with non-financial goals are creating DAOs and delegating decision making to these communities as a way to help the firm maintain fidelity to its non-financial goals. We leverage a multiple case study design to examine the role that firm hierarchies play in structuring the participation and decision-making of DAO communities and investigate how the ideology of techno-optimism informs the way firms attempt to utilize DAO communities to resolve the tensions of hybridity, and to what effect. (with Vivianna He and Trevor Young-Hyman)

Fostering Positive Relational Dynamics in Teams: The Power of Spaces and Interaction Scripts (Academy of Management Journal, 2020)

Despite well-accepted understanding that relational dynamics characterized by respect, openness and connectedness are critical for healthy team functioning, we know little about how to foster such dynamics. Drawing on observation and interview data from an intervention that fostered positive change in the relational dynamics of a global distributed team, this paper theorizes the mechanisms that enabled a move toward positive relational dynamics. We found that the intervention brought about relational changes by not only creating spaces where the team could experiment with new forms of interaction, but also by utilizing interaction scripts – concrete guidelines for interaction that specify content parameters and participation rules. We find that the combination of spaces and interaction scripts was critical for helping the team enact counter-normative forms of interpersonal sharing that led to the emergence of positive relational dynamics. While existing research has highlighted the importance of spaces for enabling positive relational change, this paper theorizes the complementary role that interaction scripts can play in the change process. These findings have implications for research on positive relationships at work, organizational change, and global and geographically dispersed teams. (Co-authored with Leslie Perlow and Melissa Mazmanian)

New Prospects for Organizational Democracy?: How the Joint Pursuit of Social and Financial Goals Challenges Traditional Organizational Designs (Capitalism Beyond Mutuality, 2018)

This book chapter argues that less-hierarchical designs, specifically democratic approaches to organizing, could have increasing relevance given the growing emphasis on social responsibility in corporations. Drawing on parallels with theories of political democracy, we argue that organizational democracy’s ability to integrate diverse viewpoints can support the joint pursuit of commercial and social objectives. We proceed, first, by drawing on an extensive literature review to assess the ways in which organizational democracy has been conceptualized in recent decades, and to document the relative lack of substantive discussion about it in comparison with other alternatives to hierarchy. We then characterize the recent surge of socially engaged models of enterprise and press the case that this turning point warrants reconsideration of the merits of organizational democracy. (Co-authored with Julie Batillana and Michael Fuerstein)

The Challenges of Becoming a Less-Hierarchical Company (Harvard Business Review, 2024)

More and more organizations are looking to create flatter, less hierarchical models to increase collaboration, agility, and employee empowerment. But recent research at a food processing company in Colombia outlines some stumbling blocks companies might face when trying to change their structure. Specifically, the researchers and company CEO highlight a series of structural and people dynamics leaders should look out for in their own efforts (Co-authored with Eric Anicich and Juan Pablo Sanchez Celi)

How Companies Are Using Tech to Give Employees More Autonomy (Harvard Business Review, 2022)

While automation is the purest form of decentralization, rather than automating frontline workers, technology’s best use might be to automate the functions of management, especially middle management (e.g., coordination, accountability, direction, and governance). If technology is going to make something redundant, why not replace those things we currently don’t like — such as overly matrixed coordination, red tape bureaucratic processes, command-and-control decision-making (by people who don’t have the best data to make the decisions), and antiquated compliance approaches — rather than those we do (like our human colleagues)? (Co-authored with Ethan Bernstein and Joost Minnaur)

Beyond the Holacracy Hype: The Overwrought Claims - and Actual Promise - of the Next Generation of Self-Managed Teams (Harvard Business Review, 2016)

Holacracy and other forms of self-organization have been getting a lot of press. Proponents hail them as "flat" environments that foster flexibility, engagement, productivity, and efficiency. Critics say they're naive, unrealistic experiments. We argue, using evidence from a multi-year research agenda at several mainstream organizations that have adopted these forms, that neither view is quite right. Although the new forms (built upon on a half-century of research on and experience with self-managed teams) can help organizations become more adaptable and nimble, most companies shouldn't adopt their principles wholesale. A piecemeal approach usually makes sense. Organizations can use elements of self-management in areas where the need for adaptability is high, and traditional models where reliability is paramount. (Co-authored with Ethan Bernstein, John Bunch and Niko Canner)