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Companies with routine operations often pursue team‐based continuous improvement in the context of standardized work. Continuous improvement requires that work standards are periodically “unlocked”, i.e. made objects of reflection and improvement. This paper aims to theorize and empirically explore a method for unlocking standards which has received little attention in the literature: systematic work observation. It identifies which factors constitute and promote a work observation practice that supports continuous improvement.

The paper presents an explorative, qualitative case study of an industrial company in which systematic work observation is practiced. Empirical material was collected from two principal sources: company documentation and teaching material; and interviews with workers, managers and work design experts from three of the company's major plants.

Systematic work observation supports continuous improvement when there is genuine two‐way communication between the worker being observed and the supervisor acting as observer. Through dialogue, the appropriateness of the standard procedure is reflected on. Systematic work observation is supported by frequent day‐to‐day interaction between supervisors and workers. Frequent interaction builds relationships of trust and a shared purpose. A necessary requirement is that supervisors are technically competent and know the details of the operating procedures. The results also indicate that supervisors, not fellow workers, should preferably take the role as observers.

Systematic work observation as an instrument for continuous improvement has not yet been explored in a serious scholarly manner. The findings of this paper have practical implications for companies that wish to implement systematic work observation.

This article addresses why movements towards less-hierarchical organizing may be unsustainable within organizations.

Eschewing hierarchy may prove sustainable if alternative forms of management are acceptable to both employees and managers accountable for those employees’ performance. Developing alternatives means dealing with the fundamentally contradictory functions of coordination and control. Through a qualitative case study of a manufacturing company that removed first-line supervisors, this article analyses how issues of control and coordination were dealt with formally and informally.

Removal of the formal supervisor was followed by workers’ and middle managers’ efforts to informally reconstruct hierarchical supervision. Their efforts to deal pragmatically with control and coordination were frustrated by formal prescriptions for less hierarchy, leading to contested outcomes. The article identifies upward and downward pressures for the hierarchy’s reconstruction, undermining the sustainability of less-hierarchical organizing.

This study is limited by the use of cross-sectional data and employees’ retrospective narratives. Future research on the sustainability of less-hierarchical organizing should preferably be longitudinal to overcome these limitations.

Unless organizational changes towards less hierarchy engage with issues of managerial control and upward accountability, they are likely to induce pressures for hierarchy’s reconstruction.

The article offers an original approach to the classical problem of eschewing hierarchy in organizations. The approach allows us to explore the interrelated challenges facing such restructuring, some of which are currently unacknowledged or underestimated within the literature.