I suspect it exists because the person above them just wants one person to yell at and doesn't want to learn the names of everyone below them. The manager isn'

I suspect it exists because the person above them just wants one person to yell at and doesn't want to learn the names of everyone below them. The manager isn't a genius and the employees aren't morons. The business objectives could be explained to those employees and they could coordinate with each other to fulfill them without necessitating a conductor. Deep hierarchies are archaic holdovers from military organizational thinking.