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The Tyranny of Stucturelessness
Contrary to what we would like to believe, there is no such thing as a structureless group. Any group of people of whatever nature that comes together for any length of time for any purpose will inevitably structure itself in some fashion. The structure may be flexible; it may vary over time; it may evenly or unevenly distribute tasks, power and re... See more
The Tyranny of Stuctureless
Ostensibly, having a flat organization is a good idea. You know, everyone should be equal and have the same rights, blablabla. But not having a formally defined power structure would only lead to the tyranny of structurelessness, where informal power structures form spontaneously from preexisting social relations between members, producing leaders ... See more
Zefram Lou • Why Voting Tokens Are F**king Horrible, And 4 Ways to Fix Them
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If groups do not develop intentional “democratic structuring,” Freeman argued, informal power structures will form, usually reinforcing existing hierarchies and privilege.
Nathan Schneider • Governable Spaces: Democratic Design for Online Life
“It’s like no one even read ‘The Tyranny of Structurelessness,’” said an engineer who had recently read “The Tyranny of Structurelessness.”
Anna Wiener • Uncanny Valley: A Memoir
If the attempt to provide a structure that will ensure communitas is impaled on the horns of its own dilemma, might one not abandon the machine model and have a go at the organic—permitting process to determine structure? But to do so is to go even further than the Anarchists, and to risk not only being called but being in fact regressive, politica
... See moreUrsula K. Le Guin • Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places
Centralized structures can have virtues, such as enabling publics to focus their limited attention for oversight, or forming a power bloc capable of challenging less-accountable blocs that might emerge. Centralized structures that have earned widespread respect in recent centuries—including governments, corporations, and nonprofit organizations—hav... See more
Nathan Schneider • A visual guide to decentralization | New_ Public Magazine
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Proposition 4. Because attempts to control and coordinate activities in institutionalized organizations lead to conflicts and loss of legitimacy, elements of structure are decoupled from activities and from each other.
American Journal of Sociology • Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony on JSTOR
Jay Matthews added
Decisions need to be made and expectations set, one way or another, and social norms will develop around how those functions are carried out. Organizations that attempt to forgo an explicit power structure thus end up with an implicit one, which is often quite political and somewhat resistant to change. This less-than-conscious structure may still
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