Hierarchy

It is well established in sociology that, since time immemorial, societies have cultivated and sustained hierarchies of power, privilege, and prestige. Before the turn of the twentieth century Max Weber (1864–1920) posited that with the development of capitalism and modernity, such hierarchies would come to be institutionalized in bureaucracies and justified by a legal-rational mind-set. Weber's description of bureaucracy, with its hierarchical chain of command, was grounded in his observation of the Prussian army, a clearly and exclusively male organization. Thus, his theory of bureaucracy, upon which all subsequent bureaucracy theory and research has been based, contains this gender bias. With the exception of the studies of grassroots, collectivist-democratic organizations that began to come to print in the late 1970s, the entire multidisciplinary field of organizational theory and behavior emanating from departments of sociology, political science, management, and public administration can be said to be an extensive elaboration of Weber's original theory of bureaucracy, which included an ideal typical exposition of its characteristic features and an explanation for its spread and permanent nature in all modern societies. The gender bias in the hundred-year study of bureaucracy and hierarchy since then emanates from its beginnings.

However, ever since the consciousness-raising groups of the 1960s and 1970s that marked the beginning of the contemporary women's movement, feminists have been developing a challenge to hierarchical relations and their manifestation in bureaucracy. Key to the feminist case against bureaucracy is an understanding of how women end up subjugated in hierarchal control structures (Ferguson 1984) and how gender-based inequities of treatment have been the outcome in both industrial and service sectors of the economy and cross-nationally. In addition, Acker (1990) has shown how bureaucracy theory itself rests on masculine images and biases and urges organizational scholars to explore these further, while searching for alternative, less hierarchal modes of organization.

The search for a way out of women's relegation to the lower rungs of organizational hierarchies has taken three tacks: First, many researchers have examined various social movement activities that have tried to achieve greater gender equality at the organizational level.

A second and rich vein of research has searched, not for how women might improve their lot in existing hierarchal structures, but for how women might create alternative organizations that would eliminate hierarchies of skill, influence, and privilege. In this regard, many examples have been found, and over the last decades of the twentieth century thousands of grassroots feminist enterprises were built along self-managing and democratic lines.

Based upon Kathy Ferguson's (1984) argument that feminism and bureaucracy are incompatible and on Joyce Rothschild-Whitt's (1979) conception of a collectivist-democratic form of organization that could stand as an alternative to bureaucracy, many researchers have asked whether there is an empirical connection between feminist values and collectivist-democratic organizational structures. For example, feminist beliefs were translated into egalitarian and democratic innovations in the National Women's Studies Association studied by Robin Leidner (1991) and in the numerous feminist collectivist organizations in Quebec studied by Jennifer Beeman, et al (2005). The rape crisis centers and battered women's shelters studied by Nancy Matthews (1994) and Claire Reinelt (1994), respectively, continued to use many collectivist, anti-hierarchal practices even after they received state support for their organizations. Kathleen Iannello (1992) found many feminist organizations that are developing a process of consensus-based decision-making that she calls "modified consensus," which allows them to make decisions without hierarchy but also without the requirement of unanimous approval. Darcy Leach (2006) finds that the contemporary movement organizations in Germany assume a collectivist-democratic form, but still vary in terms of how they go about resolving conflicting points of view. Additionally, some of the American communes like Twin Oaks have developed some creative devices to overcome hierarchy and achieve equality in both work and gender relations (Rothschild and Tomchin 2006).

Not all studies, however, have found a direct correlation between feminist beliefs and the development of egalitarian or democratic practices. Sherryl Kleinman (1996), for example, finds that gender-based inequalities of influence persist even in a feminist health center she studied. In a study of 113 women's non-profit organizations in New York City, Rebecca Bordt (1997) challenges whether the previously asserted affinity between feminist ideology and collectivism exists, finding that organizations with an unspecified feminist ideology are more than twice as likely to be bureaucratic as collectivist. Bordt argues that most of these organizations present a hybrid, blending both professional and collectivist elements into one. Similarly, Sarah Oerton (1996) finds little reason to believe that work in flatter organizations will improve women's position in workplace hierarchies. Given the existence of these anomalous findings, more research is needed on the circumstances that can give rise to more egalitarian and less hierarchal organizational forms and on the specific effects more democratic structures may have on the material position of women and on power relations at the organizational level.

A third vein of scholarship looks at bureaucratic workplaces that are developing flatter team structures from within. Self-managing teams are spreading, particularly in engineering, manufacturing, and service enterprises. The research question is whether these new teams can bring about a new division of labor in which workplace decisions are made on an egalitarian footing, competencies are cross-trained, and tasks can be rotated and shared on a gender-equal basis.

One study of a team structure in a bank setting indicates the positive potential teams may have for cross training and thus upgrading the skills of those who previously occupied the lower rungs of the organizational hierarchy (Smith 1996). Another study of teams, also in a bank context, suggests that men in technical professions may be not very interested in learning what they see as the content of "women's work," presenting a major obstacle to egalitarian relations arising out of team work (Ollilainen and Rothschild 2001). The jury is still out on whether these new team structures within corporate settings will in fact bring more egalitarian relations to the workplace.

In sum, substantial social science research has been pursued on how to bring more egalitarian gender relations to the hierarchal organizations and institutions that dominate modern societies. Some of this research has focused on campaigns to bring more equal opportunity to conventional workplaces; other research has focused on the prospect for developing egalitarian teamwork and flatter structures within the bounds of large-scale bureaucracies. Choosing neither of these avenues, thousands of female-centered enterprises have been created around the turn of the twenty-first century, wherein the aim is to make decisions and accomplish tasks without recourse to hierarchal command structures. The edited volumes by Myra Marx Ferree and Patricia Yancey Martin (1995) and Joyce Rothschild and Celia Davies (1994) contain analyses of dozens of such organizations. Only time will tell the extent to which these pioneering organizations will prefigure the widespread development of counter-hierarchical structures in postmodern society.

see also Patriarchy.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Acker, Joan. 1990. "Hierarchies, Jobs, Bodies: A Theory of Gendered Organizations." Gender and Society 4(2): 139-158.

Beeman, Jennifer; Nancy Guberman; Danielle Fournier; et.al. 2005. "Are the Movement's Organizations Open to the Movement's Members? A Study of Democratic Practices in Women's Groups in Quebec."

Bordt, Rebecca L. 1997. The Structure of Women's Nonprofit Organizations. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Ferguson, Kathy. 1984. The Feminist Case against Bureaucracy. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Ferree, Myra Marx, and Patricia Yancey Martin. 1995. Feminist Organizations: Harvest of the New Women's Movement. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Iannello, Kathleen P. 1992. Decisions Without Hierarchy: Feminist Interventions in Organizational Theory and Practice. London: Routledge.

Kleinman, Sherryl. 1996. Opposing Ambitions: Gender and Identity in an Alternative Organization. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Leach, Darcy. 2006. "The Way is the Goal: Ideology and the Practice of Collectivist-Democracy in German New Social Movements." Dissertation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan.

Leidner, Robin. 1991. "Stretching the Boundaries of Liberalism: Democratic Innovation in a Feminist Organization." Signs 16(2): 263-289.

Matthews, Nancy. 1994. Confronting Rape: The Feminist Anti-Rape Movement and the State. New York: Routledge.

Oerton, Sarah. 1996. Beyond Hierarchy: Gender, Sexuality and the Social Economy. London: Taylor & Francis.

Ollilainen, Marjukka, and Joyce Rothschild. 2001. "Can Self-Managing Teams Be Truly Cross-Functional? Gender Barriers to a 'New' Division of Labor." Research in the Sociology of Work 10: 141-164. Oxford, UK: Elsevier Science Ltd.

Reinelt, Claire. 1994. "Fostering Empowerment, Building Community: The Challenge for State-Funded Feminist Organizations." Human Relations 47(6): 685-705.

Rothschild, Joyce, and Celia Davies. 1994. Gender and Organizational Life. Special issue of Human Relations 47(6): 583-754.

Rothschild, Joyce, and Amy Tomchin. 2006. "Can Collectivist-Democracy Bring Gender Equality? The Efforts at Twin Oaks." Research in the Sociology of Work 16.

Rothschild-Whitt, Joyce. 1979. "The Collectivist Organization: An Alternative to Rational-Bureaucratic Models." American Sociological Review 44(4): 509-527.

Smith, Vicki. 1996. "Employee Involvement, Involved Employees: Participative Work Arrangements in a White-Collar Service Occupation." Social Problems 43(2): 166-179.

                                             Joyce Rothschild