Hierarchy

Most organizations and social groups are hierarchically ordered to some degree. Contemporary [Page 320]societies have far greater numbers of organizations with complex hierarchical structures than ever before in history. Given that people often do not like to exist within hierarchies where they take orders from above and oversee those below, one question that arises is why modern societies are hierarchically ordered and whether this is likely to remain the case.

In human history, the development of hierarchy as a form of authority and control has increased inexorably. From what we know of 20th-century foraging societies, they were the most egalitarian form of human society on earth. There would be some form of authority from elders but no strict hierarchy, and sharing food seemed to be the norm. With no capital accumulation, hunter-gatherer societies could remain egalitarian, sharing food and risks. As groups got larger and especially as agriculture developed, allowing some form of capital accumulation, hierarchies started to form. Social hierarchies based at first on wealth and then by historical convention through blood developed. Political hierarchies also developed as societies began to become more complex and specialist roles were required. The most developed hierarchies historically have been armies. Generally, armies are structured in units and subdivisions, each with a commander who reports to the unit above. Until relatively recently, most societies did not have many organizations that were hierarchically structured outside of armed forces. Exceptions include ancient civilizations in South America, which seemed to have had strict hierarchical forms through government offices, and the Chinese system of government, which had a strict bureaucratic structure that also ordered the population by rank and by geographical region.

In the West today, hierarchies are all-pervasive. Businesses and government bureaucracies tend to be strictly hierarchically organized, meaning that most people work in hierarchical organizations. It is easy to forget that this has not always been true. During the Industrial Revolution, larger firms started to develop but these had fairly flat hierarchies with a few managers at the top, supervisors for both clerks and workers, and then the mass of workers. Even toward the end of the 19th century, many people worked as individual tradespeople and most economic activity was carried out in small cottage industries rather than in vast industrial concerns. State bureaucracies in most European countries and the United States were only loosely hierarchical. Land agents, postmasters, and customs and taxing officers worked as individuals miles from their nearest “supervisor” and often took payment from the taxes they collected. High government officials had offices around them, but any pyramid hierarchical structure was low and flat.

So why did hierarchies develop? With larger groups and more complex tasks, coordination and collective action problems develop. Having an agent to solve these problems through authoritative direction brings efficiency. For example, in small foraging groups, it is quite easy to monitor who is collecting and sharing food. Each member of the group can police every other member. In large groups, however, especially where specialism develops, it is much harder to monitor others. If I am ignorant of the difficulty of the tasks you are doing, it is hard to judge whether you are shirking. A monitor of a set of individuals each carrying out the same specialist task can compare the output of each worker to make judgments about who is working well and who shirking. If the monitor knows the task because the monitor was once one of the specialists, all to the good, but all the monitor really needs is to compare the output of different people doing the same tasks. In this sense, monitors become specialists themselves. They need authority to command workers in their tasks and perform the policing function. In this manner hierarchies develop. They are a consequence of size and complexity.

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