Research on Self-Organization
Directory
Max Spall:
The definition and the frame
Lee and Edmondson (2017) reviewed decades of research on organising with less hierarchy and gave the field a working definition. A self-managing organisation is one of those that "radically decentralize authority in a formal and systematic way throughout the organization".
Martela (2019) takes four problems every organisation must solve, from Puranam, Alexy and Reitzig, splits two of them, and compares how bureaucracy, adhocracy and self-managing organisations solve all six: dividing tasks, allocating them, rewarding, stopping freeriding, giving direction and coordinating.
Reineke, Katila and Eisenhardt (2025) review a hundred and seventy-seven studies of decentralisation across four waves, and conclude that today's is "neither a revolution nor a mirage".
Studies of single organisations
Lee (2024) spent eighteen months with a payments company of a hundred and twenty-five people that had adopted Holacracy, asking which practices keep decentralised authority going and why they break down.5 Martela and Nandram (2025) describe Buurtzorg, the Dutch home-care organisation with over fourteen thousand people in more than nine hundred teams, two directors and no middle managers.
Jensen and Mikkelsen (2024) studied a Danish public addiction rehabilitation service of about fifty professionals, which in 2018 chose not to replace two departing department managers and handed their work to its teams.
Valkiainen (2026) spent twelve months coaching and studying a Holacracy adoption in a family-owned manufacturer in the Baltic region.
Bourlier Bargues, Valiorgue and Islam (2025) followed a French dairy firm of eighty people for four years, through the removal of all its managers and their return.
Comparisons and an experiment
Lee (2019), in his Harvard doctoral dissertation, ran a twelve-month field experiment in the State of Washington's technology agency, asking whether taking decision authority away from managers improves people's sense of power, engagement and satisfaction, and for whom.
Lee and Young-Hyman (2026) compared four organisations committed to decentralising that had to centralise during the pandemic."
References
- Lee, M. Y. (2019), Self-Managing Organizations: Exploring the Dynamics and Consequences of Radically Decentralizing Authority, doctoral dissertation, Harvard Business School, p. 49.
- Martela, F. (2019), "What makes self-managing organizations novel? Comparing how Weberian bureaucracy, Mintzberg's adhocracy, and self-organizing solve six fundamental problems of organizing", Journal of Organization Design, 8:23.
Puranam, P., Alexy, O. and Reitzig, M. (2014), "What's 'new' about new forms of organizing?", Academy of Management Review, 39, 162 to 180,
Reineke, P., Katila, R. and Eisenhardt, K. M. (2025), "Decentralization in Organizations: A Revolution or a Mirage?", Academy of Management Annals, 19(1), 298 to 342.
Lee, M. Y. (2024), "Enacting Decentralized Authority: The Practices and Limits of Moving Beyond Hierarchy", Administrative Science Quarterly, 69(3), 791 to 833.
Martela, F. and Nandram, S. (2025), "Buurtzorg: scaling up an organization with hundreds of self-managing teams but no middle managers", Journal of Organization Design, 14, 227 to 237.
Jensen, T. B. and Mikkelsen, E. N. (2024), "Positive, challenging, or impossible self-managing organizations? Exploring radical decentralization at an addiction rehabilitation center", Journal of Organization Design, 13, 147 to 162. The findings are at pp. 154 to 158.
Valkiainen, V. (2026), "The human side of self-managing organizations: Unlearning the learned helplessness", Human Relations, 79(11), 1368 to 1400.
Bourlier Bargues, É., Valiorgue, B. and Islam, G. (2025), "To Be and Not to Be: The Middle Management Paradox and Resistance Escalation Process During Transitions to Self-Managing Organizations", M@n@gement, 28(3), 40 to 62.