In Defense of Hierarchy: The Hypermodern Structure in U.S. Military and Multinational Corporations

Abstract

Multinational corporations (MNCs) have had difficulty implementing the heterarchical organizational form defined by Hedlund (1986, 1993). Unlike hierarchical organizations, heterarchical organizations possess the following attributes: (1) a multidimensional structure with respect to knowledge, action, and position of authority, (2) asymmetric ordering of the dimensions, (3) temporary subordination and simultaneous sub- and superordination, (4) nontransitivity and circularity, (5) horizontality, and (6) normative, goal-oriented direction. Although unadulterated heterarchy is not an achievable state, examples from the U.S. military demonstrate how heterarchical principles may be applied in practice. This paper contributes to the extant literature by demonstrating that the heterarchical principles employed by the U.S. military are applicable within MNCs. We posit that a heterarchical structure permits the intentional creation of organized chaos, which in turn allows an MNC to deal with a complex environment ...