Hierarchies are everywhere, from family-run businesses to multinationals, and under the spotlight as never before. On the plus side, command chains enable control and co-ordination. They also have many drawbacks, as the British academic John Child highlights in his recently published book, Hierarchy.

Hierarchies, he writes, concentrate rewards at the top, foster secrecy and are, arguably, “a failing organisational principle” for an era in which innovation depends increasingly on ideas created by young tech workers.

They may even be bad for health. Studies of the British civil service known as the Whitehall cohort studies found that, grade by grade, these officials, the embodiment of hierarchy, had worse health and shorter life expectancy than officials ranked above them. After controlling for standard factors, the researchers attributed the unexplained gap to lack of autonomy, a known metabolic stressor. But, if hierarchy is flawed, are there any alternatives?