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The relationship between organisation size, technology implementation, and organisational culture is examined. Thirty‐five American and Canadian manufacturing organisations were surveyed concerning their approach to implementing statistical process control (SPC) technology. Organisations were classified as either large or small and hierarchic or non‐hierarchic. Approaches to implementing SPC were measured and compared among the four groups (large hierarchic, small hierarchic, large non‐hierarchic and small non‐hierarchic). Results indicated that both the size of the organisation and its culture determine how that organisation goes about implementing technological change. Larger organisations use inter‐departmental liaisons, temporary task forces, and permanent implementation teams more than smaller organisations in implementing new technology. Non‐hierarchic organisations appear to use goal and direct contact mechanisms at higher levels than hierarchical organisations when it comes to innovation and change. Results also indicate that there is more in common in the area of technological implementation between large and small businesses, and hierarchical and non‐hierarchical organisations than is often suggested.

The purpose of this paper is to report on an empirical study of the effectiveness of transformational, transactional and laissez‐faire leadership across hierarchical levels in manufacturing organizations in the UK. The aim was to develop a framework of leadership across hierarchical levels that would be useful for leadership development programmes and interventions.

Managers from 38 companies completed a 360‐degree version of the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire. Multiple responses – self, superior, subordinate and peer ratings – were obtained for 367 managers of whom 15 per cent were female and 85 per cent male, aged between 21 and 62 years (mean=42 years), from 38 organizations in the UK manufacturing sector. Of the 367 subjects, unanimous (cases were used only if all ratings agreed on the hierarchical level of the subject) opinions on hierarchical level were gained for 215 (58 per cent), which includes 30 top‐level managers, 33 directors, 54 senior managers, 43 middle managers and 55 lower managers. Data concerning time span were also obtained for 253 managers.

The findings of the research show a distinct pattern of behaviours across different hierarchical levels of organizations. Transformational leadership is equally effective across hierarchical levels in organizations, whereas transactional leadership is not effective at the uppermost hierarchical levels in organizations but effective at levels lower down. Laissez‐faire leadership is ineffective at all hierarchical levels.

A framework of effective leadership behaviours across hierarchical levels in organizations was developed from the findings. This framework can be used as a basis for leadership development in UK manufacturing organizations and potentially wider more general organization contexts.

The main function of hierarchies is to coordinate activities within an organization, but a hierarchical structure also provides work incentives, by offering the prospect of hierarchical mobility. An alternative way for organizations to motivate workers is through job design. In organizations offering rewarding jobs, the incentivizing role of hierarchies may become obsolete, and the number of hierarchical levels can be reduced. Two job design features are particularly relevant: autonomy and problem-solving. We investigate the relationship between the number of hierarchical layers and job design features empirically using the European Company Survey (ECS 2019). We find that the extent of the adoption of both complex job design and autonomous teamwork is negatively associated with the number of hierarchical layers. However, the association between complex job design and the number of hierarchical layers is weakened, and in some cases disappears, in larger organizations where hierarchies have a more important coordination role and it is weakened when the knowledge acquisition costs are high. The use of autonomous teams is robustly negatively associated with the number of hierarchical layers.

In order to make knowledge management (KM) successful, the most important aspect is to nurture an appropriate organizational culture. Furthermore, many studies indicate that hierarchical cultures can significantly hinder the success of KM activities. The purpose of this paper, therefore, based on the antecedents of hierarchical culture, is to utilize four activities of knowledge conversion to explore the impact of hierarchical culture on the effectiveness of KM processes.

In order to understand the influences of hierarchical culture on knowledge conversion and KM processes, both qualitative and quantitative techniques were used to analyze the data. A case study of two large companies included interviews with several senior managers. A survey questionnaire was also administered to senior managers in 31 Taiwanese companies that had hierarchical cultures.

Through interpretative case studies and questionnaire analyses, the research finds that a hierarchical culture influences KM practices and can act as a mediator for knowledge conversion and KM processes. For instance, developing a hierarchical culture will be suitable for combination and externalization. Moreover, it would be beneficial to the implementation of KM. In contrast, it would not be helpful for socialization and internalization. In addition, it would not be beneficial to KM strategy and planning.

The results need to be validated with a robust survey.

The conceptual framework provides a convenient way to illustrate the effects of hierarchical culture on knowledge conversion and KM processes. Enterprises can make corrections and adjustments accordingly to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of implementing KM through the appropriate organizational culture.

The paper proposes a conceptual framework to illustrate the influences of hierarchical culture on knowledge conversion and KM processes in Taiwanese organizations.

This paper aims to investigate how organizational structure (i.e. centralized hierarchical vs decentralized egalitarian decision-making) can color leadership evaluations of equivalently positioned men and women independent of their actual leadership style. This study addresses three questions: Are men’s leadership abilities, in terms of competence, dominance and interpersonal skills, evaluated more positively than women when they lead a hierarchical company? Are men and women’s leadership abilities evaluated similarly when they lead an egalitarian company? Do organizational outcomes change these effects?

The research performs an eight-condition online vignette experiment on American community college students.

The findings suggest that organizational structure and outcomes influence how male versus female leaders are perceived. When leading a hierarchical company, male leaders not only gain more in perceived leadership ability when their company succeeds but are also less likely to lose legitimacy when their company fails. When leading successful egalitarian organizations, men and women’s leadership skills are thought to gain similar legitimacy, but when an egalitarian organization fails, perceptions of female leaders’ competence, status dominance and interpersonal skills drop more than those of men.

This study’s generalizablity is limited given the sample of participants and the context of the industry utilized in the vignette.

This study suggests that women’s promotion into leadership can be impeded by the decision-making structure of the organizations they lead independent of their individual choice in management style. Women leaders face not only disadvantaged evaluations of their leadership abilities in hierarchical organizations but are also not unilaterally advantaged in egalitarian organizations.

This paper highlights the need to theoretically examine how organizational structures fundamentally embed gender stereotypes.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the possibilities of workplace democracy in contemporary organisations. While organisational democracy is a popular theme in contemporary management literature, it is often asserted that participatory democracy is impractical and thus representative forms of governance constitute a more appealing and “realistic” option. Such views not only fail to picture workplace democracy beyond procedural principles (e.g. periodical elections), but they also block one of its promising features: its openness to change. In this context, direct democracy that is guided by horizontality and prefiguration may offer more promising grounds in the search for workplace democracy.

The paper exposes the contradictions and limits of representative democracy and traces the debates around hierarchism and horizontality, size and democracy with the aim to focus on its core theme – workplace democracy.

This paper argues that although representative democracy is considered a “realistic” alternative to hierarchical forms of governance it, in fact, reproduces and legitimizes hierarchism. Therefore, organisations can effectively coordinate collective action, without representatives and strict hierarchical structures, by giving emphasis to decentralized networks guided by horizontality and prefiguration.

The paper shows that the current demands for workplace democracy through representation constrains one's imagination of organisational democracy and therefore, one's perception of workplace democracy has to be broadened and radicalized by giving emphasis not only to who rules but also to the process of governance, that is, how to rule.

This paper aims to present that deliberate change is strongly associated with formal structures and top-down influence. Hierarchical configurations have been used to structure processes, overcome resistance and get things done. But is deliberate change also possible without formal structures and hierarchical influence?

This longitudinal, qualitative study investigates an open-source software (OSS) community named TYPO3. This case exhibits no formal hierarchical attributes. The study is based on mailing lists, interviews and observations.

The study reveals that deliberate change is indeed achievable in a non-hierarchical collaborative OSS community context. However, it presupposes the presence and active involvement of informal change agents. The paper identifies and specifies four key drivers for change agents’ influence.

The findings contribute to organisational analysis by providing a deeper understanding of the importance of leadership in making deliberate change possible in non-hierarchical settings. It points to the importance of “change-by-conviction”, essentially based on voluntary behaviour. This can open the door to reducing the negative side effects of deliberate change also for hierarchical organisations.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a new similarity method to gauge the differences between two subject hierarchical structures.

In the proposed similarity measure, nodes on two hierarchical structures are projected onto a two-dimensional space, respectively, and both structural similarity and subject similarity of nodes are considered in the similarity between the two hierarchical structures. The extent to which the structural similarity impacts on the similarity can be controlled by adjusting a parameter. An experiment was conducted to evaluate soundness of the measure. Eight experts whose research interests were information retrieval and information organization participated in the study. Results from the new measure were compared with results from the experts.

The evaluation shows strong correlations between the results from the new method and the results from the experts. It suggests that the similarity method achieved satisfactory results.

Hierarchical structures that are found in subject directories, taxonomies, classification systems, and other classificatory structures play an extremely important role in information organization and information representation. Measuring the similarity between two subject hierarchical structures allows an accurate overarching understanding of the degree to which the two hierarchical structures are similar.

Both structural similarity and subject similarity of nodes were considered in the proposed similarity method, and the extent to which the structural similarity impacts on the similarity can be adjusted. In addition, a new evaluation method for a hierarchical structure similarity was presented.

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationships among hierarchical organizational culture, organizational support for women, sexual harassment and work-to-family enrichment of working women in South Korea.

A total of 196 responses from married female employees who had a child (or children) in for-profit organizations in South Korea were analyzed by using structural equation modeling and bootstrapping analysis.

The findings indicated that hierarchical organizational culture was negatively associated with organizational support and was positively associated with sexual harassment. In addition, an organizational atmosphere that is friendly and supportive to women had a positive effect on work-to-family enrichment. However, the more sexual harassment female workers experienced, the less positive the relationship between their work and family lives. Hierarchical organizational culture negatively affected work-to-family enrichment, but the effect was indirect through organizational support and sexual harassment.

These findings emphasize the importance of transforming the traditional culture in Korean organizations to reduce power distance to create a more female-friendly and supportive environment. With the dramatic recent increase in the number of female workers, building such an environment can enhance organizations’ competitiveness by creating a positive spillover effect between women’s work and family lives.

We present a simulation designed to capture the impact of both formal authority ties and informal socialization ties on the performance of an organization adapting to a turbulent world. We present a summary of three key models that informed our approach and then outline and describe the operation of our resulting simulation. Using an experiment that manipulated both the authority network structure and the stress the organization placed on socialization, we show inefficient authority structures harm performance, and also that socialization has a strong and nonlinear impact on peak organizational performance and on the performance of top management. We also present a case study, instantiating the general model with the specific context of a real-world organization. Finally, our integrated multimodel suggests that companies should pursue different strategies in hiring key strategic actors than they do for other actors.