Knowledge-intensive work is quite different from the physical manufacturing work that birthed the corporate hierarchies widely prevalent today. Consider the incompetent Pointy-Haired Boss in the Dilbert comic strip: He can’t lead through wisdom or better information, and he’s unable to control his subordinates because their work depends on effort that he can’t observe or comprehend.

Add the usual challenges of transmission losses, such as control and information in multilayered hierarchies, and one might justifiably ask if hierarchies are an anachronism in today’s knowledge-intensive economy. Some academics have even argued that hierarchies may be effective instruments of execution but are ultimately ineffective at adaptation in the face of complexity and uncertainty.

In line with this thinking, many organizations—from tech companies to professional services firms—have experimented with agile or flat designs that dismantle traditional forms of hierarchy to harness the distributed knowledge of specialized individuals.

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