Ok then, the 'flat' organization devolves into a hierarchical one where you have to ferret out the real structure (or guess). So that a/b scenario never happens, even in the flat company.
Except the structure in a flat organization is all ad-hoc, there's no teeth behind it. Just because Joe in accounting talks loud and operates with charisma doesn't give him dictatorial powers backed by "do it or you're fired" powers.
It also means that when shit goes wrong, there's no "buck stops here" person who's ultimately responsible. Joe can always argue that he's just a member of a committee and defer responsibility to everybody else, and use his charisma (and probably a backlog of favor trading) to scapegoat somebody else.
The most important thing is that all this is a distraction from the business of the company. All this time that Joe has to invest in gathering and cultivating meaningless power that he shouldn't have, and putting in place an invisible power structure that everybody around him has to navigate...could better be spent doing, I dunno, accounting perhaps?
Flat structures tend to work only when organizations are very small, or can be compartmentalized into very small groups, but there's tacit acknowledgement that even in those cases there needs to be a formal dictator to make sure the ball is moving forward and people aren't wasting time in power brokering exercises. When the organizations get large, it becomes a necessity.
It also means that when shit goes wrong, there's no "buck stops here" person who's ultimately responsible. Joe can always argue that he's just a member of a committee and defer responsibility to everybody else, and use his charisma (and probably a backlog of favor trading) to scapegoat somebody else.
The most important thing is that all this is a distraction from the business of the company. All this time that Joe has to invest in gathering and cultivating meaningless power that he shouldn't have, and putting in place an invisible power structure that everybody around him has to navigate...could better be spent doing, I dunno, accounting perhaps?
Flat structures tend to work only when organizations are very small, or can be compartmentalized into very small groups, but there's tacit acknowledgement that even in those cases there needs to be a formal dictator to make sure the ball is moving forward and people aren't wasting time in power brokering exercises. When the organizations get large, it becomes a necessity.
Peer groups define fashion, not progress.