Another strategy for revitalizing an organization is to reject the
traditional Weberian model of a "tall"hierarchy where a chief executive officer sits at the head and passes down orders while various bureaus report up to him. The modern notion of a"flat"hierarchy is used to refine the bureaucratic model so that power and communications flow horizontally instead of vertically. Teams and other semi-autonomous units work to resolve problems within the larger organizational structure. Instead of competing, teams assist
each other and build coalitions as necessary. The argument in favor of these new approaches is that the old bureaucratic model is unworkable. It assumes that top management possesses skills and insight into the organization and its operations that are tacking among lower echelon employees, This kind of
"factory mentality"may have been a useful approach to organizational
structure and operation when the Industrial Revolution transformed the nature of the workplace in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but new times require new approaches.
New approaches also require new vocabularies, some of which have
become so familiar in recent years that they border on being clichés. The notion of"empowering"employees is bandied around frequently and its
meaning often is difficult to discern. At its core, empowerment is the idea that employees can contribute far more to the success of an organization when they are afforded the responsibility and the tools to undertake projects without constant and repetitive approval from officers higher up in the organization. This objective is easier to discuss than it is to implement, but ultimately it require a commitment from managers to delegate responsibility and authority in return for a commitment from workers to perform their tasks using creative methods with little or no direct supervision.
In the traditional bureaucratic model of an organization, top management develops the organization's mission and vision as well as the tasks required to accomplish the organization's goals. Managers must then communicate the appropriate actions to be undertaken by their subordinates ensure that the employees perform those tasks in an acceptable manner. This process generally is referred to as external commitment because it occurs outside of the employees. Internal commitment, by contrast, requires
managers to explain the objectives to their employees and leave it to teams of employees to define the tasks, set an appropriate level of work and behavior,and to some extent, manage themselves. The role of top management changes from a patriarch that controls virtually every aspect of the employees'