Research on flat firms has many dimensions. To introduce this special issue, we start our essay with a thought experiment.Footnote 1 In his novella Flatland (1884), Edwin A. Abbott describes life in a “flat,” two-dimensional world that is populated by geometric shapes—squares, lines, triangles, and the like. The inhabitants of Flatland have no consciousness or sense of anything outside the dimensions of their world. Therefore, if a (three-dimensional) sphere were to pass through Flatland, a square observing the event would not see the moving sphere, but rather see something radically different. At first, when the sphere were to touch Flatland, the square would see a point; then, as the sphere were to cut through the plain, the point would become a growing line (which the square could perhaps infer to be a circle with increasing diameter); at some point, the line would become smaller again, until it became a point and then was gone. In other words, the square would experience an object appearing mysteriously from nowhere, changing its shape dramatically, and disappearing again. If the square could lift itself into the third dimension, its perception of the world would change dramatically. For instance, what the square had perceived as growth and contraction in time is just motion in space when seen from the sphere’s perspective—in a sense, a much simpler process.

While highly abstract, we believe that this thought experiment about dimensionality holds (at least) three lessons for organization design. The first lesson is about the conceptual value of thinking about organization design in terms of dimensionality. Just like the inhabitants of Flatland, organizations are confined in their perceptions and actions by the dimensions that define their designs. Each organization design is a multi-dimensional construct, a point in a space that is defined by the numerous choices firms make (and partly have to make) concerning their structures, decision rights and processes, coordination and control mechanisms, culture, and so on.

The second lesson has to do with the empirical implications of dimensionality. Given the multi-dimensional nature of organization designs, describing any design accurately (i.e., "locating" it in the design space) requires many coordinates. Also implied is a "curse of dimensionality" (Bellman 1961) in the sense that the volume of a multi-dimensional design space tends to be huge, while data tends to be sparse. In other words, while an almost endless variety of organization designs is possible, only some designs are actually realized and viable. What’s more, to the extent that complementarities exist among different design dimensions (Levinthal 1997), realized organization designs may even form clusters in certain regions in a design space, rather than being spread out more evenly.

The third lesson relates to the costs and benefits of changing dimensionality. On one hand, gaining meaningful insights about organization designs, such as by comparing different types or configurations, often requires a projection from a higher-dimensional space to a lower-dimensional space. Such projections, however, entail the penalty of losing valuable information, distorting relationships, and so on. On the other hand, given that our understanding of the relevant dimensions of organization design is far from complete, organizational research and practice can also help us "enter" another dimension, just like the square being lifted into space, by adding novel dimensions or redefining established ones.

Which brings us to research on organizations with less hierarchy. By focusing on the phenomenon of flattening firms, this research ponders the “what if?” question, pushing the boundaries of what is perceived or conventional wisdom. This special issue on “Designing Flat Organizations” was motivated by the recent publication of a book on the same topic, “Get Better at Flatter: A Guide to Shaping and Leading Organizations with Less Hierarchy” by Markus Reitzig (Reitzig 2022).

To begin, Markus Reitzig (in “How to get better at flatter designs: considerations for shaping and leading organizations with less hierarchy”) provides an introduction to his own thinking and extensive research about the design and management implications of flat(ter) firms. Olav Sorensen (in “Flat firms, complementary choices, employee effort, and the pyramid principle”) discusses the complementarities and costs of flat firms and suggests a theory for how firms may systematically end up with more hierarchy than is ideal. Phanish Puranam (in “Deflating the rhetoric around ‘flat firms’”) puts forward the idea that algorithmic technologies may allow organizations to reduce their reliance on hierarchy, and authority more broadly, and to consequently deploy self-management more widely. Constantinos Markides (in “Boundary conditions for effective delegation in flat structures”) discusses how values, rules, and purpose may serve as helpful guides to creating flat structures. Ethan S. Bernstein (in “Leveling the ‘flatter’ playing field”) points to the need for disentangling hierarchy from centralization and for investigating the potential role of blockchain-based, trustless interactions in creating a new generation of flat processes. Linus Dahlander (in “The role of autonomy and selection at the gate in flat organizations”) suggests that future research on flat firms might fruitfully study the roles of autonomy and modularity in more depth, and calls for broader empirical tests of predictions about flat firms to counter a potential survivor bias in existing work. Finally, Oliver Alexy (in “How flat can it get? From better at flatter to the promise of the decentralized, boundaryless organization”) discusses how current work on understanding flat firms may inform future research on even broader organizational developments such as technology-enabled collaboration that has little resemblance to a “traditional” firm.

Now imagine that the Martian visitor characterized by Simon (1991) approaches Abbott's Flatland, where “firms reveal themselves, say, as solid green areas with faint interior contours marking out divisions and departments. Market transactions show as red lines connecting firms, forming a network in the spaces between them. Within firms (and perhaps even between them), the approaching visitor also sees pale blue lines, the lines of authority connecting bosses with various levels of workers. As our visitor looked more carefully at the scene beneath, it might see one of the green masses divide, as a firm divested itself of one of its divisions. Or it might see one green object gobble up another. … (T)he greater part of the space below it would be within green areas, for almost all of the inhabitants would be employees, hence inside the firm boundaries. Organizations would be the dominant feature of the landscape. A message sent back home, describing the scene, would speak of ‘large green areas interconnected by red lines.’ It would not likely speak of ‘a network of red lines connecting green spots’ (p. 27)”.

Inspired by Abbott and Simon, we believe that more research is needed on the design of flat organizations in the following areas.

First, future researchers can challenge Simon’s initial idea from 30 years ago, given how much has changed since then. With all the new technology (e.g., blockchain and cloud computing) and novel organizational forms (e.g., digital platforms and ecosystems), which of the two descriptions—“large green areas interconnected by red lines” or “a network of red lines connecting green spots”—would Simon’s Martian visitor report back now? Regardless of whether Simon's initial conclusion is still valid, the field needs to move beyond individual case studies and systematically document the presence (or absence) of organizational flatness across firms and industries as well as its evolution over time. Such efforts can help avoid producing another hype, which might hamper our understanding of whether and how flat organizations really matter.

Second, extending Simon’s Martian visitor analogy, researchers can ask related, but distinct, questions. For example, in addition to comparing the size of areas and lines, we could also ask, What are the shapes of the areas? Are firms flat, tall, or even square or round? Furthermore, is it possible that how the areas and lines are distributed and connected affects the shape of the areas? To explore these questions, as we mentioned before, researchers need to take the perspective of Simon’s Martian visitor, escaping the two-dimensional constraint of a Flatland resident.

Third, whether an organization is flat, which is a question of organization structure, can’t be fully answered without returning to Chandler’s notion of “Strategy and Structure” (Chandler 1962) and in particular the firm’s corporate strategy represented by the scope of activities it undertakes. In contrast to industrial firms of the past that had both large scale and scope (Chandler 1977, 1990), modern digital firms tend to have even larger scale (hyperscaling) but significantly narrower scope (hyperspecialization) (Giustiziero, Kretschmer, Somaya, and Wu, forthcoming). Would the focus on a narrower set of resources and capabilities whose impacts are multiplied through the scaling properties of digital technologies allow such hyperspecialized firms to be flatter despite their extremely large scale? Would this “structure follows strategy” conjecture still hold true in the digital economy?

Fourth, future work can engage with a variety of methods, including formal modeling, in-depth case studies, archival approaches, and experimental methods to examine whether flat organizations are merely outliers, perhaps more suitable for only certain firms in certain industries, or possibly suitable only for part of a big organization, e.g., a team pursuing a particular initiative.

We are extremely fortunate that a set of established scholars have contributed to this special issue, offering their thoughts on the book as well as the topic, more broadly. Their insightful essays help illustrate the many dimensions of research on flat firms. We hope that the special issue can contribute, even if only modestly, to opening up new perspectives and allowing us to see organizations in ways they have never been seen before.