I think it works the same whether it is a small company or an empire. The key is the bureaucracy to worker ratio. You need just enough bureaucracy to glue thing

I think it works the same whether it is a small company or an empire. The key is the bureaucracy to worker ratio. You need just enough bureaucracy to glue things together. But anything more than that starts being counter productive. In my examples the productive company had a bureaucracy/staff ratio of close to 0. The dysfunctional company had a bureaucracy/staff ratio of more than 2. Enough said.