I worked for a company with a 'flat' hierarchy. There was actually a secret hierarchy, and I got pushed out for defying the secret hierarchy. The structure allowed the 'managers' to avoid any accountability.
This is actually a fairly old and well-known idea, first proposed in the 1960s.
"this apparent lack of structure too often disguised an informal, unacknowledged and unaccountable leadership that was all the more pernicious because its very existence was denied."
People interested in ultra modern flat management structures would do well to look up the history of communes, collectives, and other experiments in self-organizing.
Isn't there often "informal, unacknowledged and unaccountable leadership" hiding within traditional hierachical structures? It's often not fully apparent from the organizational chart who has real power and influence.
