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

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.