Top Down: Why Hierarchies Are Here to Stay and How to Manage Them More Effectively

by Harold J. Leavitt

Book Overview

Despite the many positive changes in organizations in recent years, their basic multilevel, pyramid-shaped, hierarchical structure has not gone away and, Leavitt (organizational behavior and psychology, Stanford U.) argues, is unlikely to disappear anytime soon. Leavitt examines our dislike of hierarchies, why they persist, their purpose in the mod

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1591394988
• ISBN13: 9781591394983
• Release Date: November 2004
• Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
• Length: 189 Pages
• Weight: 1.14 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.5" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

A must read for managers and supervisors!

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. It is written in a plain and direct style that makes it an easy read. As a major in organizational psychology and a management consultant for major corporations, this book resonated loudly with me. The author explains how hierarchies fulfill basic human needs and the constant struggle between the humanizers - those that treat humans as masters and organizations as instruments - and the systemizers those who treat organizations as masters and humans as just another company resource. He also discusses the role of the leader/manager and more importantly, how middle managers can learn to cope more effectively with the inevitable staying power of hierarchies. A must read for all managers!

Highly Recommended!

This book could be subtitled "A Survival Manual for Those Stuck in the Middle." In the modern hierarchical (read "authoritarian") organization, the beleaguered middle manager is indeed stuck in the middle. Author Harold J. Leavitt is a self-professed "humanizer" who acknowledges the dehumanizing, authoritarian tendencies of the modern hierarchical organization. However, he goes beyond automatic humanistic inclinations to ask an important question: "What's the alternative?" Hierarchies have structured human activity for centuries. They've learned to cloak themselves in commoners' clothes in order to do business in egalitarian cultures, but don't let that fool you. Large organizations are still ruled by hierarchies, and woe unto the middle manager who forgets it. Leavitt's book evinces empathy for the plight of the unsung middle manager who has to meet the company's objectives while helping it appear to be something it's not: caring and humanistic. We highly recommend this book to all managers caught in the middle - which is to say, all managers.

Insightful and Necessary

Leavitt takes a much needed pragmatic approach to hierarchies in TOP DOWN. Not only does he illustrate just how axiomatic the hierarchy is to organizational structure, but he provides several prescriptions to alleviate its maladies. This is a fascinating and functional book that everyone-not just those in managerial positions-should peruse.