Ladders of Authority, Status, Responsibility and Ideology: Toward a Typology of Hierarchy in Social Systems

A Georges L Romme

doi:10.3390/systems9010020

Abstract

Hierarchy is a key characteristic of any complex system. This paper explores which notions of hierarchy are being used in the field of organization and management studies. Four distinct types of hierarchy are identified: a ladder of formal decision-making authority, a ladder of achieved status, a self-organized ladder of responsibility and an ideology-based ladder. A social mechanism-based perspective serves to define and distinguish these four types. Subsequently, the typology is further developed by comparing the four hierarchy types in terms of their tacit/explicitness, (in)transitivity and behavior- versus cognition-centeredness. This article contributes to the literature by dissecting the general metaphor of hierarchy into four different constructs and their social mechanisms, which serves to create a typology of the various ways in which complex social systems can be characterized as hierarchical. This typology can inform future research drawing on any type of hierarchy.

Highlights

The notion of hierarchy is widely used but is rather ambiguous because highly different interpretations exist
Another notion has been developed in the literature on organization design and organizational agility, which conceives of hierarchy as a requisite system that emerges in a self-organized manner from operational activities [6,7,8,9]
The social mechanism driving any ladder of authority is the legitimacy of decisionmaking authority, which arises from the constitution or statutes of the incumbent organization—regardless of whether this is a company, non-profit organization or governmental agency [31]

Summary

Introduction

The notion of hierarchy is widely used but is rather ambiguous because highly different interpretations exist. In companies and other organizations, hierarchy often involves a sequence of levels of formal decision-making authority [2,3,4] Another notion is hierarchy as a ladder of ideology, in which people establish themselves as legitimate leaders by invoking some (e.g., religious or political) idea to legitimize the relationship between higher or lower levels [5]. Another notion has been developed in the literature on organization design and organizational agility, which conceives of hierarchy as a requisite system that emerges in a self-organized manner from operational activities [6,7,8,9]. The purpose of this article is to develop a typology of hierarchy, by mapping the various ways in which hierarchy is defined

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Conclusion