Austrian economics has a lot to say about how to organize firms for maximum value generation. Austrian principles point to the delegation of entrepreneurial judgement to the front-line employees who interact directly with those who actually create value: users.
The military organization models of the twentieth century, involving command-and-control in hierarchical structures, are slow to change, and the management literature evidences an unwillingness to abandon the hierarchy. But there is a fast-growing industry that’s the locus of prodigious value generation where the hierarchy has already been abandoned and flat networks of distributed judgement are taking its place. Ulrich Möller is one of several Austrian economists who are studying the firms in the video game industry and demonstrating how their findings can bring positive organizational change to the rest of the business world.
Show notes: https://mises.org/library/ulrich-moller-video-game-industry-points-future-organization-design
"The Future of Organizational Design" — our E4B Knowledge Graphic (PDF): https://Mises.org/E4B_133_PDF
"Levels without Bosses? Entrepreneurship and Valve’s Organizational Design" by Ulrich Möller and Matthew McCaffrey: https://Mises.org/E4B_133_Paper1
"Entrepreneurship and Firm Strategy: Integrating Resources, Capabilities, and Judgment through an Austrian Framework" by Ulrich Möller and Matthew McCaffrey: https://Mises.org/E4B_133_Paper2