Gary Hamel: Nog nooit werkten zo veel mensen in grote organisaties.

Nog nooit werkten er zo veel mensen in grote, bureaucratische, organisaties. En nog nooit hebben zo veel mensen een management- of staffunctie. Tot die conclusie komen managementguru Gary Hamel en Michele Zanini na nieuw onderzoek. “Despite all of the hype around alternatives — the gig economy, the sharing economy, holacracy, lean –bureaucracy has been growing, not shrinking“, schrijven Hamel en Zanini. Tussen 1983 en 2014 is het aantal management- en staffuncties in de VS met 90% gestegen. Andere landen in de OESO laten vergelijkbare cijfers zien.

“Today, more Americans are working in large, bureaucratic organizations than ever before. In 1993, 47% of U.S. private sector employees worked in organizations with more than 500 individuals on the payroll. Twenty years later, that number had grown to 51.6%.”

Om te reageren op de complexe uitdagingen van de hedendaagse economie lijken organisaties eerder hun heil te zoeken in meer dan in minder management. “This mindset has produced a surge in new C-level roles: Chief Analytics Officer, Chief Collaboration Officer, Chief Customer Officer, Chief Digital Officer, Chief Ethics Officer, Chief Learning Officer, Chief Sustainability Officer and even Chief Happiness Officer. And more prosaically, who, if not managers, is going to do the everyday work of planning, prioritizing, allocating, reviewing, coordinating, controlling, scheduling, and rewarding?”, aldus Hamel en Zanini in Harvard Business Review.

Blij zijn ze niet met deze trend: “Our research suggests that bureaucracy is not inevitable; it’s not the inescapable price of doing business in a complicated world. Rather, it’s a cancer that eats away at economic productivity and organizational resilience.”  

(bron: HBR/video) 

Gary Hamel is een van de keynotespeakers op de HRTechWorld conferentie in Parijs (25/26 oktober)