[versteegen]

Counter-argument: the justification given for Holacracy is that generally in life groupings of people aren't structured in that way. The example they give is that in a city there are no bosses, everyone choses a career, looks for work, finds accomodation, etc, independently. The mayor isn't your boss. This is of course the foundation of capitalism: free agents.

[mvitorino]

"Boss" is often too restrictive as a word. You can call it "leaders", "spiritual guides", "representatives", whatever, but they exist in a hierarchy.

Even though the individual is the indivisible element of a society, we as individuals inevitably take part in different organisations (financial, political, religious). In each of these more or less spontaneous organisations we assume a role and in some of these roles we will make decisions for several people.

The mayor is the elected leader, chosen by a majority, to make these decisions for us in a certain scope. You can't challenge his decisions on your own. If you don't like them, you either try to have someone else elected the next time or move elsewhere.

If you are catholic, the pope is also not our "boss", but boy does he have the power, legitimacy and support to influence a lot of people in arguably one of the most successful organisations to ever exist.

Don't get hung up on the "boss" word.

[jacques_chester]

> This is of course the foundation of capitalism: free agents.

Exercise for the reader: If Holacracy is taking a pure free market as its model, why not just dissolve the company?

Hint: look up Ronald Coase.

[versteegen]

Except there's no market. Free agency is a more general concept than free markets. Assumably, cooperation rather than competition.

[jacques_chester]

Cooperation is one of the pillars of markets, because markets are based on exchange. A buyer and seller cooperate to make an exchange.

Coase's question was: why don't we see the free market structure that linear algebra predicts? Why do firms exist?

His answer was fairly insightful. Markets impose search and transaction costs. To buy something from a market, you must search it for a seller and come to terms.

Inside a firm, that search cost may well be zero. Need HR services? Call HR. No need to look for a provider, negotiate a contract and so on. Need IT? Ring the support department. No need to weigh the virtues of IBM vs HP vs the corner store.

But sometimes it's the other way around. Need pens? In some companies the process is so onerous that you'll just go to the local store and buy your own.

That boundary moves around (consider the impact of IT, for example), but it's always there. If search and transaction costs fall to zero, the firm would in theory become unnecessary.

Comparing a market -- or a city -- to a firm is a mistake, because they are different structures emerging from different pressures on the same free agents.