True, all groups of humans form informal hierarchies, even in the presence of formal power structures. What formal hierarchies have that flat organizations don

True, all groups of humans form informal hierarchies, even in the presence of formal power structures. What formal hierarchies have that flat organizations don't is the ability of the formal hierarchy to use normative actions to drive the optimization function to favor the organization and not the people at the top of the informal hierarchy. e.g. a loud mouthed developer can't force the CEO to do something they don't want, while a CEO can fire a disruptive employee