Introduction
Holacracy is a specific form of organization of a company’s structure that implies the elimination of all the organizational hierarchies. The concept was invented by Brian Robertson as a method of improving corporative efficiency. The lack of ranks is supposed to encourage the employees to work out new plans and projects without being restricted by the positional prevalence. One of the major holacracy organizations aims is to develop corporative partnerships and to improve the psychological climate. According to this approach, the employees are to be organized in circles all the representatives of which are enabled to determine their roles and the responsibility area (Robbins and Coulter 23).
Holacracy concept, advantages and disadvantages
One can point out several benefits that the holacracy concept offers in contrast to the standard hierarchy structures. First of all, such a form of organization enables employees to focus on the work itself rather than on its presentation in front of the higher management. Moreover, the equality of people’s positions provides a corporative context favorable for the development of unconventional ideas and strategies. The realization of the projects is supposed to be facilitated as far as there is no necessity of its multi-level consideration in different departments. Finally, the holacracy approach is likely to inspire the company’s members to approve themselves in the new professional field – the employees are free to choose the tasks to carry out. This fact can prompt the reveal of new talents among the staff. Thus, holacracy is likely to create a new type of organization all the members of which feel the significance of the common contribution to the work they perform.
Meanwhile, the realization of holacracy approach implies a series of challenges. First of all, the option to choose the roles in the operating process might result in the disproportional distribution of the responsibilities. It is likely to turn out that the majority of the employees take up the same tasks while some key issues will be incomplete. Secondly, the idea of equality among the staff members is problematic to be put into action due to its unnatural character. The appearance of leaders in the working group is an inevitable outcome of any activity. Therefore, some of the employees are apt to take up the controlling function of the managers regardless of the lack of the position titles. Furthermore, the absence of a hierarchy structure does not absolve the company from its duty to solve such organizational problems as labor payment and staffing. Holacracy approach does not explain how these matters are to be settled, which department is to be responsible for the mentioned issue. Hence, the main drawback of the holacracy strategy is the excessively free interpretation of the responsibility bearing – the lack of managers who are in charge of the decision-making process can have a negative effect on the company’s results rating.
Conclusion
The perspective of working in a holacracy organization does not seem to be attractive. One will experience confusion and malaise if the conditions and the terms of the work are unclear. Lack of exact tasks and goals will oblige an employee to spend the major part of the time planning and targeting instead of performing the work itself. Besides, the lack of distinct criteria of the results’ monitoring will make the improvement process impossible as the staff will be unable to give an adequate estimate to the outcome of their activity, neither will they be able to consult the superior authorities.
References
Robbins, Stephen, and M. Coulter. Management. 13th ed. 2015. New York, New York: Prentice Hall. Print.