Linear hierarchy may have been effective for quick decision making in the age of paper and print but as Marshall McLuhan and Barrington Nevitt point out in thei

Linear hierarchy may have been effective for quick decision making in the age of paper and print but as Marshall McLuhan and Barrington Nevitt point out in their book Take Today: The Executive as Dropout (1972)[1], in the age of electric media distributed networking and flat hierarchies become the most effective organizational form and "Johnny on the spot" is the one who makes the quickest and most accurate decision as opposed to the executive: McLuhan: Take today means that at the speed of light, today includes all the past that ever was, and all the future, it's here now. Nevitt: That is we can retrieve the past, we can be in touch with the present, and the future of the future is the present, so we are in touch with all times now, today. McLuhan: But let us notice that in a world of simultaneous information, you have basically an acoustic world, not a visual world with a point of view, not a positional world from which to look at the future or the past, but an acoustic world in which you are bombarded simultaneously by every kind of data from every direction ... the simultaneity of information means that you live in a world which is simultaneous in terms of its information structure. From every direction you have information electrically. Now this creates a new kind of space. Nevitt: Yes, it is a new kind of space for us and yet an old kind of space for humanity. McLuhan: Well, for pre-literate man. Nevitt: Yes. McLuhan: The space in which we live is identical to the space of pre-literate man, pre-visual man, it is acoustic space. Nevitt: Post-literate space and pre-literate space are similar. McLuhan: Yes but the question that seems not to have entered most minds is, what is the structure of acoustic space? In fact, most psychologists have never heard of acoustic space and they don't understand its properties. Its properties are those of a sphere whose center is everywhere and whose margin is nowhere. Nevitt: That is, no boundaries, and no single center, but centers everywhere. McLuhan: centers everywhere, margins nowhere. Nevitt: No points of view. ... McLuhan: The old structure was made up of fragmented specialist jobs. Nevitt: Exactly, and hierarchies of responsibility which were delegated from the top down and channels of communication which were supposed by the organization chart upon which they flow from top to bottom, and bottom to top. McLuhan: So the theme of our book is that you cannot use an organization chart with electric services added. Nevitt: So that "the executive is drop out" means three things, it means first of all: the man who finds himself as top executive in a large organization, gets out of touch with the action, that is, he gets so far out of touch with what's happening, that as a human being, he has no more satisfactions in the process. That’s the first thing it means. The second thing is that specialism as a means of coping with this acoustic space, doesn't work, that is it has dropped out, it is no longer effective. And the third thing is, that in a knowledge environment, that is where the information is everywhere, like acoustic space with centers everywhere and margins or boundaries are nowhere, then every man knows how to be an executive, and "johnny on the spot" is the man who really makes the decision. McLuhan: Oh, the hijacker is a nice case of a man who wants to be an executive and wants to take over an operation but he also wants coverage, he wants part of that global theatre for himself, he wants to be in the center of the show. Nevitt: And the global theater itself becomes possible, and the hijacker becomes possible only in a world which is such that you are on camera. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTyzjC_s-kk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTyzjC_s-kk