What does flat management mean?

Flat management, also known as flat management, is a new management mode of modern enterprises, aiming at reducing management levels and improving management efficiency.

Flat management structure, including matrix structure, team structure and network structure. , emphasizing workflow as the center, fully exchanging enterprise information, and appropriately authorizing enterprise resources and power. The flattening process of organizational structure is a long-term and arduous major change, which can only be achieved if it is carried out in a planned, hierarchical and step-by-step manner.

Generate background:

Modern enterprise organizational structure theory can be divided into two stages:

In the first stage, from Adam Smith's theory of division of labor to the 1980s, this stage emphasized a high degree of division of labor and the organizational structure became larger and larger. The organizational form starts from the linear system to the business department system, which we can call the traditional bureaucratic organizational structure.

The other stage began in the 1990s, emphasizing simplification of organizational structure, reduction of management levels and flattening of organizational structure.

In the bureaucratic organization mode, the linear-functional system is a common organizational form adopted by enterprises, and its typical form is the vertically integrated functional structure, which emphasizes the specialization of centralization and coordination. It is suitable for the situation of stable market, few product varieties and great demand price elasticity. Its characteristics of centralized control and asset specialization make it difficult to adapt to the diversification of products and markets, and it is gradually replaced by business division organization.

Division organization emphasizes the combination of division autonomy and centralized control of enterprises, and takes the maximization of departmental interests as the core, which can continuously train senior management talents for the company. This organizational form is conducive to the diversification of large enterprises, but it is not easy to coordinate the long-term strategy and short-term interests of enterprises.

With the expansion of enterprise scale, bureaucratic organizations are inevitably faced with:

1, communication cost, coordination cost, and control the rising of supervision cost.

2. The intensification of division of labor between departments or individuals makes the organization unable to achieve the best overall benefits.

It is difficult to respond quickly to the rapid change of market demand.

Flat organization is precisely because bureaucratic organizational model is difficult to adapt to the requirements of fierce market competition and rapidly changing environment.

The so-called organization flattening is to establish a compact horizontal organization by breaking the top-down vertical towering structure of the company, reducing management levels, increasing management scope and reducing redundant personnel, so as to achieve the purpose of making the organization flexible, agile, flexible and creative. It emphasizes the simplification of system and management level, the expansion and decentralization of management scope.