The Role of Hierarchy in Realizing Collective Leadership in a Self-Managing Organization

This article is about leadership in a self-managing organization. Empirically, it is grounded in a participatory action research study stretching over two years, oriented around the following question: how does instances of hierarchical leadership and collective leadership interact across different dimensions of power in a self-managing organization? The article concludes that although this self-managing organization is largely governed in the day-to-day through collective leadership, this outcome still relies on hierarchical management of discourse and the processes which replace authority. That is, the article concludes that there is a dynamic between hierarchical and collective forms of leadership in this specific self-managing organization that serves to make its mode of self-management viable. In terms of practice, the results suggests that truly radical decentralization of decision making in the day-to-day is possible and can be highly effective. Furthermore, perhaps counterintuitively, results suggests that there can be a role for quite pronounced hierarchical leadership in making collective leadership flourish – at least when transitioning from a managerial hierarchy. Further research into this area might study organizations that are originally started as self-managing organizations and see if the same role for hierarchical management of collective leadership exists also in this type of case.