120. Part One Organizations, Manage and the Networked Enterpris INTERACTIVE SESSION: MANAGEMENT Can Technology Replace Managers? startup companies are known for being innovative, ‘and one of those innovations appears to be the way they are being managed. A number ofthese new firms are trying to minimize headcount and maxi size agility by eliminating management hierarchy. In place of managers, they're turning to technol- gy, including user-riendly.software ang Inw-cost ‘web-based services such as Amazon.com's Redshift for storing corporate data, analyz presenting the results in the form of dashboards that anyone in the firm can use. In the past such data were difficult to obtain, required more ‘managers to organize and interpret, or could not be analyzed without expensive business intelligence systems costing millions of dollars. Today even small start-ups can afford to store and manipulate nearly limitless pools of data in near realtime For example, Chubbies, a rapidly growing clothing start-up targeting college fraternities, doesn't have a ‘CEO. Instead, it has four co-CEOs, each in charge of his or her own business function. This structure is repeated all the way down the company’s hierarchy All;Ghubbies employees have access to the same data a8 its top managers. According to Ton Montgomery, ‘one of the Ghubbies co-CEOs, when you don't have 4 traditional CEO and final decision maker, you have trust people to rhake the right decisions based on gation they see. Although it takes time to ‘rust, once you do, the company can quickly. ppoints out that in the past, an associ- in events for clients might report to he marketing department in charge of he data, and first place. Today, the event plan- ne can use an array of dashboards to ly how many Facebook likes, Insta- chain of command, holocracy organizes the busi ness as a series of overlapping, sel governing circles." Instead of having jobs, holocracies haw les" Each role belongs to a circle rather than a department. The circles overlap, and individu als hold many different roles. Individuals assigned roles in these circles work together, and their mee ng outcomes are recorded using web-based sof ware called Glass Frog. This system allows a in the company to view who's res role and what they'te working on. Glass Frog pro: vides a “to-do list that teams use to defi they're supposed to be doing and to hold themselves accountable for those tasks Although Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh continues to trumpet self management, it is unclear if employer widely share his enthusiasm. Some employees wel med the opportunity for 1 With sible for wha nplayed, less senior re attention Introverts have benefited from the expectation that everyoody speak in meetings. Other employees were and frustrated by numerous mandates, endless meetings, and uncertainty about who did what.To whom would they report to if there were no bosses? What was expected of them if they did nat have a job title, and how would they be compen- sated? Within weeks after Zappos embraced holoc racy, about 14 percent oFemployees had left the company. The employee exodus has continued. Zap poss urnover rate for 2015 was 30 perc centage points above its typical annual attrition rate. ‘Treehouse Island Inc. a Portland, Oregon, online ‘coding school, also had a flat organization. Staff worked fourday weeks, worked only on projects they liked, rarely had to send e-mail, and had no direct bosses. However, the business grew, with about 100,000 students enrolled in its online courses and 100 employees. Some projects weren't being com. pleted, and employees were unsure of their responsi bilities. Trechouse wasn't burdened by bureaucracy, but work still stalled nevertheless. Without managers to coordinate projects and supervise and encourage workers, Trechouse employees weren't as produc- tive as they could have been. According to Trechouse it, 10 per:Chapter 3 intornation Sy ga ‘Qhestions about which subjects to each wou spark much analysis and chatter but di few answers or plans. Michael Watson, who headed ‘Treehouse finance and operations, estimated that decisions about matters such as Trechouse’s website design took twice as long as they should have. ‘Trechouse partially reversed course in the spring, nours, With roles tracking assignments, e-mail productivity According to Quy Huy, professor of st prestigious graduate bust re often vili hinge fall ategy at the Singapore campus of the ness school Insead, rid fied as symptoms of corporate bloat, bu managers a of 2015, Employees still work four-day weeks, but apart without them they now have managers. Since that change was ‘made, revenue has increased along with the number of minutes of video courses the company produces ‘The time required for customer support employ ees to respond to students who have questions has dropped to three and a half hours from seven. Exod Continues After Radic Sauces: Davi Gels, “The 2 Management Experiment ew York Time, Janoary fee Lar -Wy are So Many Zappos Employecs Leaving eee 16,2016, Christopher Mims, “Data ls the New Middle Mtanaset" Wal Sct journal, April 1 2005; and Rachel eine. Masia Idea atthe Ofice: Middle Managers” Wall Set ‘pri 18,2015, CASE STUDY QUESTIONS from a traditional bureaucracy to a flatte organization 4, Can technology replace manage 1. How do flat organizations differ from traditional bureaucratic hierarchies? 2, How has information technology made it possible to eliminate middle manager positions? 43, What management, organization, and technology issues would you consider if you wanted to move ? Explain your ‘Organizational Resistance to Change ‘inevitably become bound up in organizational politi be access to a key resource—namely, information. Infor Jffect who does what to whom, when, where, and how in new information systems require changes in personal ‘can be painful for those involved and require retraining at may or may not be compensated, Because informa change an organization's structure, culture, business F there is often considerable resistance to them when 1ys to visualize organizational resistance. Research on Ge to innovation suggests taat four factors are para “novation, the organization's structure, the culture 0 tasks affected by the innovation (see are absorbed, interpreted, deflected, ments, structures, and people. [n e is to change the technology er authors have spoken about -an innovation, quickly change (Kolb and many informa- ity. Indeed, the most com-