The Office Hierarchy Is Officially Dead

After predictions of its demise, the traditional office structure is crumbling. Only 38 percent of companies in a recent survey say they are "functionally organized." For large companies with more than 50,000 employees, that number shrinks to 24 percent.

These organizations are moving away from the top-down hierarchies, inherited from the industrial age, suggests a Deloitte survey, released Wednesday, of more than 7,000 companies. Traditionally, jobs were organized by function—sales people worked with sales people; marketing people with marketing—and success meant moving up the chain. But in a modern workplace, people have less-defined jobs and move laterally from project to project, said Deloitte's Josh Bersin, who worked on the study. "We're now operating businesses as networks of teams," he said. Companies that haven't already made this shift are thinking about it—92 percent of those surveyed cited organizational redesign as the top priority.