Book Review: Why Managers Matter: The Perils of the Bossless Company

Nicolai Foss and Peter Klein’s new book Why Managers Matter: The Perils of the Bossless Company revolves around what the authors call the “bossless narrative,“ the unsubstantiated claim that organization without hierarchy and management is superior and will soon be dominant in companies around the world. This claim is predominantly made in popular, practitioner focused literature and business school classes. Unfortunately, these treatments often select bad examples of hierarchy and management and use them to argue that hierarchy and management are bad in general. The authors’ aim is to counter such arguments with a well-substantiated analysis and to provide a levelheaded entry to the overall discussion. They fully succeeded. Although critical of the bossless company, their reasoning is grounded in solid research and starts from the fundamental problems every organization faces.