No Boss? No Thanks

Management guru Gary Hamel threw down the bossless gauntlet in 2011 when he urged, “First, let’s fire all the managers.” The no-manager movement has accelerated ever since, and many organizations now give serious consideration to holacracy and similar flattening and decentralizing approaches. But organizational theorist Nicolai Foss and entrepreneurship expert Peter Klein question the empirical basis for – and the logic of – the bossless company. In an interesting and convincing article for Aeon, Foss and Klein make the case that, amid the technological and demographic dynamics of today’s business world, management has never mattered more.