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Hierarchy

Hierarchy originally meant rule by a priesthood, and the term was also used to refer to the ranks of heavenly beings, such as angels and archangels. Hierarchy today normally refers to an organizing principle that uses rankings and vertical links between superior and subordinate entities. Examples include taxonomic classifications of the natural world by species, genus, family, and so on and organizational structures like that of the Roman Catholic Church, where power passes down from the pope to archbishops, bishops, and the rest. In organizational terms, the emphasis of the term hierarchy may lie either on the source of authority residing with a single ruler or chief executive or on the ranked structure by which authority is then cascaded down through the organization. The term can be used to refer to the people within the organizational pyramid as well as to the organizing principle itself.

Conceptual Overview

Talk about organization usually centers on who is in charge and how decisions should be made. In the Western world, a long history of feudal political and social structures, as well as the usual ways of organizing religious and military bodies, has made hierarchy a familiar and comfortable habit. It has come to be seen as the obvious fallback, the default option. Plato, Thomas Aquinas, René Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, Immanuel Kant, and Georg Hegel have all relied heavily on the notion of hierarchy as the “natural” way of viewing the world, of structuring our thinking, and of viewing sociopolitical structures. Others have taken as evidence so-called hierarchical structures in the animal kingdom (pecking orders among domestic fowl, dominance hierarchies among gorillas and other primates).

The work of Max Weber and others in the field of organization studies, bureaucracy, and distribution of power has also tended to assume that a hierarchical structure is the most efficient way of regulating a decision-making body. Bureaucracies, in this definition, are driven by a top-down, command-and-control approach wherein managers have a strong directive role and considerable control over others who are accountable to them.

Challenges to the Hegemony of Hierarchy

As a result of these ways of thinking about organizations, hierarchy is frequently taken for granted as the inevitable way for humans to organize themselves, or to be organized. Hierarchy can also be comfortable, in that it frees the majority of people from the responsibility of decision making. In psychological terms, it can be said to appeal to the child in each person and is frequently easier than alternatives that demand an adult, independent stance. Though the hegemony of hierarchical thinking has been challenged by radical and revolutionary thinkers such as the Levellers, Tom Paine, Vladimir Lenin, and Che Guevara, critics draw attention to the tendency of hierarchical structures to reassert themselves (for example, in revolutionary France or in Communist Russia and China). The cooperative movement has challenged conventional Western capitalist patterns of ownership, but it often still employs hierarchical patterns of organization. In almost all cases, the modernist emphasis on efficiency and the hegemony of hierarchical thinking means that hierarchy is regarded as the de facto standard against which other systems and forms of organization must be measured.

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