A NOTE ON THE HIERARCHY-TEAM DEBATE

This note explores the debate between proponents of organizational lea rning who have criticized hierarchy as an obstacle to learning and tho se who have defended hierarchy as indispensable for large organization s. By considering hierarchy and team as ideal-typical information syst ems, it is argued that both teams and hierarchies are essential for or ganizational learning in large organizations. Teams appear to be the k ey learning units which are indispensable for producing and understand ing novel information, and hierarchies are indispensable for processin g and storing important learning results. The trade-off between teams and hierarchy can be solved by emphasizing the idea of circularity, in volving the ability to switch between teams and hierarchies as complem entary information systems in the context of organizational learning.