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Hierarchical organization does not exclude using feedback from subordinates or delegating decisions.
The most efficient organizations are small businesses on their way to becoming large businesses. Founders of unicorns always talk wistfully about how awesome the company was before it got too big. The least efficient organizations are the ones that have that reputation, e.g. the Toronto Transit Commission.
The common feature of organizations that suck is that they dilute accountability, both for success and failure. Within a hierarchical organization, this is not the case. Here's another example: sports teams. The best players have the most authority, and the coach has ultimate authority. It works, because if something else worked better, everyone would do that instead.
Are they? Correct or not, "small businesses growing into large businesses" is a subset of small businesses, and a fairly small one at that.
Again, is this true? A lot of small businesses (where all the responsibility is on the owner-manager) suck quite badly despite concentrating accountability. Moreover, hierarchical organizations are great at diluting responsibility. This is true in both the public and private sector, though it is especially apparent the public sector. You can have a massive fuckup where everyone involved can - sincerely - say "I was just following instructions/official guidelines".
Subset of small businesses, that includes all large businesses.
The ones that suck do because their principal sucks. This does not say anything about the quality of the organizational structure.
I disagree. The public sector is the counterexample of hierarchy. If a superior can't fire his subordinates, it is not a hierarchical organization.
I worked in the public sector for most of my career and I fired a good number of people. Again you are using far too wide a brush. The public sector of the whole world is far too broad a category for you to be making these statements which are then trivially disproved.
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A large business is by definition not a small business.
What does this mean?
You're going to lay out what you mean by 'hierarchical' then, because it clearly has some disjunction from the common usage. In particular, the above would exclude militaries, which you previously praised.
Disobeying orders in the military is called insubordination. The penalty ranges from death (historically, maybe still in some places) to a court-martial. This is functionally the same as firing.
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In America, sports teams are vanity projects ultimately run by billionaires who want a boost in name recognition. Their teams are exempted from anti-trust and artificially scarce, so the owners feel relatively secure they can flip their team if they run into financial problems, elsewhere, or pass it on to their children where it will retain some value. And, if those owners are bad at hiring general mangers, it’s not too much of a problem. They just need to be liked, or at least not disliked, by the other owners in their league. (Think Donald Sterling, who all the other NBA owners hated, versus Robert Sarver who just got a one year suspension and a fine, for pretty much the same offense. Not that Sarver is everyone’s favorite.)
The Sacramento Kings, New York Jets and Buffalo Sabres are all sitting on 10+ year playoff droughts in leagues with a salary cap. They and their owners will not be removed if things don’t improve.
Also, bad GMs love churning through multiple head coaches before ownership stops letting them pass the buck.
Sports teams in America are franchises of multibillion-dollar corporations.
You must be thinking of Europe. In America, sports teams make money and several are owned by large companies.
None of your complaints about how the leagues are run has anything to do with how a team operates on the field/court/ice. The coach is the sole authority, but must delegate all of the actual playing. Players are given leeway in proportion to how good they are (e.g. Auston Matthews faces less consequence for a lazy giveaway than Aston-Reese). Players are also criticized in proportion to how good they are. Everyone on the team buys into the system, they win and lose together. When the coach starts to lose the players respect or the good players start to not care about the outcome, it's a problem that needs to be fixed ASAP.
Do you think any other model could win games? If so, why hasn't it been done? How does this example not apply more generally to every organization?
We’re talking about the economy, not some game where a higher power tells every firm they’re only allowed to have the exact same number of employees and set a salary cap on their wages and restrict which company employees can sign with when entering the industry and can extract concessions or prevent an employee from changing firms if an opposing firm doesn’t offer a higher guaranteed salary. It’s apples to oranges.
A team sport is "given this number of people and this equipment, do this thing better than the other team". In addition to each player being good, the team itself has to have a certain structure. Why is the right-wing hierarchical structure the only one that's ever used?
It's the most effective, and not a coincidence that rightism and affinity for team sports are linked.
I don’t think anyone argued hierarchy wasn’t efficient, or at least I have not. I think you said small business, like sports teams, are pillars of efficiency. But sports teams aren’t finding their size in pursuit or as a result of efficiency, but literally by the arbitrary rules of their sport.
A hierarchy is the most efficient organization. The most effective form of business and sports teams are this way.
By the rules of any sport you could have a non-hierarchy team. In football you could have a vote for every play call. In hockey there could be a team with diversity hires and ice time based on seniority. You don't see this because it loses in a hurry.
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Case study: Jerry Jones.
He's fascinating because he's so good at running the team as a business (his strategic decisions on marketing the Cowboys as America's team and separating their merchandizing rights have made them the most valuable team by far even though their market, Dallas is far from the top), but he's almost equally as bad at managing the team's on the field success. It seems like the more hands on he is the more mediocre they become, even with the luck of an undrafted All-Pro QB (that should have been an enormous advantage in his first few contracts).
Dallas is a pretty good market, to be fair. It’s the fourth-largest metro in the U.S. and the top two house a pair of teams, each, where the Bears and Cowboys have nos. 3 and 4 to themselves. Also, culturally, Texas is football mad. But 💯 on your point about Jones being a savvy businessman and bungling sportsman.
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