There would barely be an online games player in Australia who has not used the Steam platform to play and download games. The company behind Steam is Valve, a Seattle-based poster child for Millennial workplace values and behaviours.24 No traditional hierarchy, no bosses telling you what to do, just autonomous, collaborative opportunities to be continuously creative. The nature of games development and programming enables Valve to offer online work globally through software that encourages distributed collaboration. The company has been celebrated for reaping the benefits of a flat hierarchy that serves to motivate immense creativity and rapid business expansion.25 Sharing leadership and having no one tell you what you have to do seem useful for quelling traditional power struggles that occur in stratified bureaucracies. When you don’t have bosses, and everyone equally collaborates, you run out of reasons to be dissatisfied about anyone hogging too much of the pie, right? Well, ongoing rumblings in a few flat hierarchy companies, including Valve, have created questions about this view. Maybe the flat hierarchy removes many middle-level bosses but, in reality, power still concentrates in an overarching manager at the helm. Previous employees have suggested such companies run on the whim of the ‘baron’ at the top.26 Feelings of insecurity run high, as downsizing and being ‘managed out’ of the company are common outcomes for workers who do not meet the expected productivity levels.
Reflective question
Could it be that the fun of having no boss and few rules is a way to suggest the formal power distribution within bureaucracy is bad when, in fact, informal and concentrated power in the flat hierarchy organisations is prone to the abuse of power, just as can happen anywhere?