Quoting my self from a comment on another article https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19468090#19468699 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19468090#19468699

Quoting my self from a comment on another article https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19468090#19468699 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19468090#19468699 : > AFAICT—and again, I'm just someone who read about this stuff in magazines as a child—this kind of management-theory/theory-of-the-firm study and experimentation really was much more prominent in the public eye twenty-five or more years ago, and has faded from popular awareness since; maybe because the work itself is less common, and less influential on institutions, nowadays too. I think that's a pity, because it seems relevant to some supposedly-new things you see generating excitement nowadays, especially in the vicinity of the tech industry. For example the whole Valve structureless-or-notionally-structureless-organisation effort is probably pretty well prefigured in the work of a generation of management consultants who looked at and tried out all kinds of institutional structures or absences of structure beside the traditional corporate model, generally in pursuit of much the same ends—more innovation, more amenability to change, better decision-making—and with similar mixed-to-disappointing results. I find it weird to hear this kind of thing discussed without reference to previous research.