Draft:Types of hierarchy in social systems

Yes, you're right: this text can also be readily integrated in the "Hierarchical organization" page, assuming that not only organizations but also other social systems (e.g. families, neighborhoods, clans) can be organized hierarchically, in some sense. In the next few days, I'll rewrite and re-submit the text to fit into the page mentioned. As a newcomer on wikipedia, I'd appreciate any further suggestions and help in how to do this! HannesRammer (talk) 18:15, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

Hierarchy in organizations and other social systems refers to a ladder that arranges (e.g. the social status or formal position of) people as being &quot;above&quot;, &quot;below&quot;, or &quot;at the same level as&quot; one another. Common examples are the hierarchical relationships between parents and children, between teachers and students, and between bosses and subordinate employees. Another example is the hierarchy in many sports teams, running from coach to team captain to team members. Different types of hierarchy can arise in organizations and other social systems.

Formal and informal hierarchy
A well-known distinction is between formal and informal hierarchy in organizational settings. According to Max Weber, the formal hierarchy is the vertical sequence of official positions within one explicit organizational structure, whereby each position or office is under the control and supervision of a higher one. The formal hierarchy can thus be defined as “an official system of unequal person-independent roles and positions which are linked via lines of top-down command-and-control.”

By contrast, an informal hierarchy can be defined as person-dependent social relationships of dominance and subordination, emerging from social interaction and becoming persistent over time through repeated social processes.

Formal and informal hierarchy may complement each other and also tend to co-exist in any organization. But the general pattern observed over time in many organizations is that when formal hierarchy decreases, informal hierarchy increases, or vice versa.

Four types of hierarchy
A more elaborate typology of hierarchy in social systems was developed by Georges Romme, based on a review and synthesis of the extant literature. This typology entails four types: hierarchy as a ladder of formal authority, ladder of achieved status, self-organized ladder of responsibility, and an ideology-based ladder. The first two of these four hierarchy types can be equated with the formal and informal hierarchy, as previously defined. Accordingly, this typology extends the formal and informal hierarchy with two other types.

Hierarchy as ladder of formal authority
This type of hierarchy is defined as a sequence of levels of formal authority, that is, the authority to make decisions. This results in a ladder that systematically differentiates the authority to make decisions. A typical authority-based hierarchy in companies is: the board of directors, CEO, departmental managers, team leaders, and other employees. The authority-based hierarchy, also known as the formal hierarchy, to a large extent arises from the legal structure of the organization: for example, the owner of the firm is also the CEO or appoints the CEO, who in turn appoints and supervises departmental managers, and so forth.

Hierarchy as ladder of achieved status
Also known as the informal hierarchy (defined earlier), this type of hierarchy draws on unofficial mechanisms for ranking people. It involves differences in status, other than those arising from formal authority. Status is one’s social standing or professional position, relative to those of others. In anthropology and sociology, this notion of status is also known as achieved status, the social position that is earned instead of being ascribed. The underlying mechanism is social stratification, which draws on shared cultural beliefs (e.g. with regard to expertise and seniority as drivers of status) that can make status differences between people appear natural and fair. A ladder of achieved status is socially constructed, which makes it fundamentally different from the ladder of authority that (largely) arises from an underlying legal structure. The social-constructivist nature of status also implies that ladders of achieved status especially arise in groups of people that frequently interact—for example, a work unit, team, family, or neighbourhood.

Hierarchy as self-organized ladder of responsibility
In the literature on organization design and agility, hierarchy is conceived as a requisite structure that emerges in a self-organized manner from operational activities. For example, a small firm composed of three equivalent partners can initially operate without any hierarchy, but substantial growth in terms of people and their operational tasks will create the need for coordination and related managerial activities; this implies one of the partners may take responsibility for the latter tasks. Another example are organizations adopting holacracy or sociocracy, with people at all levels self-organizing their responsibilities;  that is, they exercise “real” rather than formal authority. In this respect, responsibility is an expression of self-restraint and intrinsic obligation. Examples of self-organized ladders of responsibility have also been observed in (the early stages of) worker cooperatives, like Mondragon, in which hierarchy is created in a bottom-up manner.

Hierarchy as ladder of ideology
In a hierarchy driven by ideology, people establish themselves as legitimate leaders by invoking some (e.g., religious, spiritual or political) idea to justify the hierarchical relationship between higher and lower levels. Ideological hierarchies have a long history, for example in the administrative hierarchies headed by pharaohs in ancient Egypt or those headed by kings in medieval Europe. The main legitimacy of any pharaoh or king arose from the strong belief in the idea that the pharaoh/king acts as the intermediary between the gods and the people, and thus deputizes for the gods. Another example is the hierarchy prevailing until today in the Balinese community, which is strongly connected to the rice cycle that is believed to constitute a hierarchical relationship between gods and humans, both of whom must play their parts to secure a good crop; the same ideology also legitimizes the hierarchical relationship between high and low castes in Bali. Ideological ladders have also long sustained the way the Catholic church as well as the Hindu caste system operates. In the latter case, “the religious justification for the four core castes lies in the belief that each derived from a different part of the creator God’s (Brahma) body, descending from the head downwards.”

Hierarchies of ideology also exist in many other settings, for instance, those driven by prevailing values and beliefs about how the (e.g. business) world should operate. An example is the ideology of “maximizing shareholder value”, which is widely used in publicly traded companies. This ideology helps in creating and sustaining the image of a clear hierarchy from shareholders to employees—although, in practice, the separation of legal ownership and actual control implies that the CEO together with the Board of Directors are at the top of the corporate hierarchy. Given that public corporations (primarily) thrive on ladders of authority; this example also demonstrates how ladders of authority and ideology can complement and reinforce each other.

Mapping the four types of hierarchy
These four types of hierarchy can be mapped on two dimensions (or axes) in the figure below. The vertical axis refers to the transitivity of each hierarchy type, which involves the extent to which the core mechanism (e.g., authority or status) can be easily delegated from one level to another. As such, the authority and ideology ladders are both highly transitive in nature, that is, formal authority and strong ideology can be rather easily delegated and cascaded from the top to various lower levels. As a result, large corporations, governmental systems and religious organizations tend to have rather deep (authority-based and/or ideology-driven) hierarchies. By contrast, responsibility and status cannot be easily delegated or transferred to others. These ladders are therefore non-transitive; that is, they are unlikely to have more than two layers. For example, if colleague A has developed a high sense of responsibility for various managerial tasks, she cannot transfer this intrinsic responsibility to other colleagues but will have to step up herself to take charge, that is, climb up the ladder of responsibility.



The horizontal axis in Figure 1 entails the difference between a behavior-centered and cognition-centered hierarchy. A behavior-centered ladder focuses on actions (to be) taken or constrained. By contrast, a cognition-centered hierarchy focuses on mental activity, including various attentional, judgemental, reasoning, and sensory processes. Here, ladders of authority and responsibility are both largely centered around behavior. The authority-based ladder draws on decision-making domains, authorization procedures, budget constraints and actual decisions taken. And the ladder of responsibility involves people seeking higher-level responsibilities and acting accordingly. By contrast, ladders of ideology and status are largely cognition-centered, by either invoking a strong ideology to legitimize the relationship between higher and lower levels   or drawing on shared cultural beliefs regarding status differences.