Holacracy: A New Way of Organizing?

Abstract

Organizations have to act in environments that are constantly becoming more insecure, dynamic, and competitive. Practitioner and scholar literature continue to call for and explore new work arrangements. The concept of Holacracy - often referred to as a ‘new form of organizing’ - represents a reaction to the increasing complexity and environmental dynamics that organizations have to deal with. It promises a new way to run organizations and aims to replace traditional hierarchical and bureaucratic structures in organizations with decentralized authority and self-organization. This article looks beyond the recent hype about Holacracy and analyses what is actually novel about the concept. In specific, we aim at identifying the core principles of the concept and discuss them against the background of bureaucratic and post-bureaucratic approaches to review whether and how Holacracy deviates from these two approaches. We do so by applying a qualitative analysis method where the book ‘Holacracy’ was subjected to content analysis. The results of this paper demonstrate that - given the high degree of formal standardization - the concept itself is still bureaucratic, although with certain modifications, especially regarding participative decision-making processes. Further, our results demonstrate that Holacracy has a very unique and unprecedented interpretation of power and authority, which requires more intensive empirical research and analysis.