Practicing Organization Development, 5th Edition

CHAPTER THIRTYBeyond Hierarchy: Heterarchy in the 21st Century

Karen Stephenson

Market and hierarchy make up a duality or “moiety” of organizational structures that have provided a framework for OD research over the last several hundred years. While a Harvard doctoral student in anthropology, I discovered that a network was a structure worthy of study, so I proposed a trifecta of organizational typologies consisting of market, hierarchy, and networks (Stephenson and Zelen 1989). As a professor, my colleagues eschewed the idea of a network insisting it was merely a fad that would never amount to a serious research agenda. However, a decade later, on September 11, 2001, the power of networks was painfully witnessed. In fact, networks are algorithmic structures and were subsequently leveraged by Google, LinkedIn, and Facebook to produce worldwide connectivity. Frankly, my original instinct about networks originated from prior doctoral work in quantum chemistry. I imagined humans interacting in a “field” much like particles and planets operate in inter-cellular and interstellar worlds. Decades later, advances in science proved this to be true (Peters and Stephenson 2023; Rovelli 2021; Wolfram 2020).

My particular challenge in persuading colleagues about the power of networks was very much analogous to a story about the 18th century hostess Marie de Vichy-Chamrond (the Marquise du Deffand). In one of her famous salons, she was conversing with Cardinal de Poignac, who told her about ...