Hierarchy 75
Hierarchy
Th e distinction between organizations and institutions brings us to the subject of
hierarchy. Second only to bureaucracy as a subject of theoretical and managerial
criticism, hierarchy is usually thought to be something that needs to be scrapped
and replaced with better forms of organizing. Based on his observations of large-
scale American business fi rms, Elliott Jaques made the following comment:
Th irty-fi ve years of research have convinced me that managerial hierarchy is
the most effi cient, the hardiest, and in fact the most natural structure ever de-
vised for large organizations. Properly structured, hierarchy can release energy
and creativity, rationalize productivity, and actually improve morale. Moreover,
I think most managers know this intuitively and have only lacked a workable
structure and a decent intellectual justifi cation for what they have always known
could work and work well. (1990, 127)Th e explanation for the persistence of hierarchy and why the search for alter-
natives to it have proved fruitless is, fi rst, that work is organized by task, and tasks
are increasingly complex and tend to separate into discrete categories of increas-
ing complexity; and, second, the mental work of management increases in com-
plexity and also separates into discrete categories. A well-functioning hierarchy
structures people in a way that meets these organizational needs: to add value to
work moving through the organization; to identify and fi x accountability at each
stage; to place people of necessary competence at each organizational level; and
to build a general consensus and acceptance of the unequal segmentation of work
and the necessity for it (Jaques 1990).
Th e complexity of tasks increases as one goes higher in an organization’s hi-
erarchy, but the complexity of mental tasks increases even more. Experience,
knowledge, mental stamina, and judgment are required at the apex of the hierar-
chy because of the need to see the big picture; to anticipate changing technology,
among other changes; and to manage the organization’s boundaries.
So, the picture comes together. Managerial hierarchy, or layering, is the only
eff ective organizational form for deploying people and tasks at complementary
levels, where people can do the tasks assigned to them, where the people in any
given layer can add value to the work of those in the layer below them, and, fi -
nally, where this stratifi cation of management strikes everyone as necessary and
welcome (Jaques 1990).
Long out of fashion in the study of public management, for even the most
elemental understanding of hierarchy, is the necessity of turning to business ad-
ministration. Doubtless the taproot of contemporary theoretical perspectives
on formal organizational structure and design, and particularly on hierarchy, is
found in the work by James D. Th ompson (1967) and applied by Henry Mintz-
berg (1979, 1992). However unfashionable the traditional organizational chart