Do We Still Need Managers?
Organising Work in the Age of Industry 4.0
As organisations move towards Industry 4.0, a serious question is emerging: do we still need traditional managers and supervisors?
For over a century, management has been built around supervising people, allocating work, and enforcing control. Yet the world of work has changed dramatically. We now have flatter organisations, hybrid working, self-motivated employees, freelancers, and AI systems that organise schedules, approve expenses, and analyse performance. Against this backdrop, the classic image of a manager overseeing tasks is starting to look outdated. Should we not consider finally ditching these “bureaucratic class of overseers” as Gary Hamel calls managers.
A Lesson from a Conductorless Orchestra
Self-managing organisations are not new. They have existed for decades, quietly proving that work does not always need layers of supervision. A striking example comes from an unexpected place: classical music.
The Orpheus Chamber Orchestra (OCO) in New York has performed without a conductor since 1972. At OCO concerts, there is no one standing at the front with a baton. Instead, the orchestra makes decisions collectively. Musicians rotate leadership roles, agree on interpretation together, and take shared responsibility for rehearsals and performances.
The result? High standards, peer support, flexibility, strong commitment, and a sense of ownership that many traditional orchestras struggle to match. The lesson is simple: when capable people are trusted, coordination does not disappear; it improves.
This same principle shows up in business.
Organisations That Work Without Managers
Several well-known organisations have operated successfully with minimal or no traditional management for many years:
- W.L. Gore & Associates, the company behind Gore-Tex, has no formal managers. Staff are called “associates” and choose projects based on where they can add value.
- Morning Star, a large tomato processor, allows employees to negotiate responsibilities directly with colleagues rather than reporting to a boss.
- Buurtzorg, a Dutch healthcare provider, runs with self-managed nursing teams and has consistently outperformed more hierarchical competitors on cost and patient satisfaction.
There are countless other examples of self-managing startups, particularly from the technology and software industry, including the biotech firm AgBiome and digital marketing agency Jellyfish. These are not small experiments. They are large, complex organisations operating in demanding sectors.
Why Traditional Management Is Struggling
To understand why manager-led structures are under pressure, we need to look at their origins. Modern management was shaped during the industrial age, when work was repetitive, standardised, and factory-based. Supervisors were needed to monitor output, enforce rules, and maintain efficiency.
Many organisations still operate as if that world exists. Three assumptions continue to dominate.
First, that managers are needed to drive productivity. Yet research increasingly shows that autonomy, not supervision, is a stronger driver of performance. During the pandemic, millions worked from home with little direct oversight, and productivity did not collapse. In many cases, it improved.
Second, that managers are needed to “join the dots”. In reality, people doing the work are often best placed to coordinate it. In self-managing teams, responsibility for planning and problem-solving is shared rather than escalated.
Third, that managers are needed to implement decisions. In traditional hierarchies, leaders decide and managers enforce. In self-managed settings, decisions and execution happen together, reducing delay and confusion.
These assumptions made sense in an assembly-line economy. They make far less sense in a knowledge-based, digital, and collaborative one.
The Impact of Industry 4.0
Industry 4.0 is defined by connectivity, data, and automation. AI systems already handle tasks that once necessitated layers of management: scheduling work, tracking performance, allocating resources, and even supporting decision-making.
At the same time, workforces are changing. Millennials and digital natives now make up the majority of employees. They tend to dislike rigid hierarchies and expect flexibility, purpose, and a voice in decisions. Add to this the rise of freelancers and contractors (often managed through platforms rather than people), and the traditional supervisor role starts to seem irrelevant.
There is also a growing disengagement problem. Gallup research consistently shows high levels of employee disengagement, with poor management cited as a major cause. As the saying goes, “people leave managers not companies.“
The Case Against Self-Management
Self-management is not without risks. Critics point to three main issues.
One is the danger of hidden power. Even in flat organisations, informal elites can emerge. Without clear processes, influence may shift to those who are loudest or best connected.
Another is complexity. Systems like Holacracy introduced detailed rules to replace managers, but in some cases created more bureaucracy, not less. Zappos famously saw a significant number of staff leave rather than adapt.
Finally, some high-profile companies abandoned self-management altogether. In many cases, the problem was not the idea itself, but poor implementation, over-engineering, or reliance on a single charismatic champion.
The lesson here is not that self-management fails, but that it must be designed carefully.
What Works in Practice
Organisations that make self-management work tend to get a few basics right:
- They keep structures simple.
Clear, lightweight rules work better than complex constitutions or heavy frameworks. - They build the right mindset.
People are supported in developing skills such as collaboration, sense-making, and shared accountability. - They use technology properly.
Digital tools handle coordination and admin, freeing people up to focus on work that adds real value. - They change gradually.
Many start with self-managed teams in one part of the business before expanding. - They mix top-down support with bottom-up experimentation.
Leadership sets direction and removes barriers, while teams test and adapt ways of working on the ground.
From Leading the System to System Leaders
Leadership isn’t disappearing in this model; it’s being gradually redistributed. As Joost Minnaar remarks, “the fact that there are no middle managers in the company does not mean that there are no leaders present. I would instead argue the opposite: Flat organizations are full of leaders. They are not leaderless, but leaderful.” The so-called bossless organisation isn’t about getting rid of leaders, but about moving from status leadership to system leadership. In Industry 4.0, value comes from collaboration, collective intelligence, and adaptability, not from supervising tasks or enforcing compliance and workflows. The real challenge for leaders now is not how to control work, but how to design organisations where people can think, decide, and act more effectively together to drive an improved work performance. In the workplace of the future, the collective system, not the hierarchy, organises the workflow.
Richard Kelly PhD
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