Packing In the Pecking Order
Communication via a network is incompatible with the notion of hierarchy. Hierarchies filter information to keep the system orderly. They move it through channels, where it's edited, delayed, politicized, and sometimes destroyed.
Electronic leadership is hyperlinked rather than hierarchical. Within and beyond an organization, communities of practice can spawn that are based on skills, personalities, knowledge bases, and interests rather than on titles or functional roles.
One example is HoustonStreet Exchange, a company that operates a Web site for on-line trading of energy resources. One hundred people work for HoustonStreet, but only forty of them are company employees. The others are teams assigned by partner firms ...
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