From Command to Collaboration
Why behavioural science is essential for a new era of the 'Eco-organisation'
Buurtzorg is a Dutch healthcare organisation that has grown from a small start-up to one of the most successful healthcare providers in the Netherlands, with more than 10,000 employees. It has a radically decentralised model of care, where small teams of nurses are empowered to make decisions without top-down oversight. These teams have the autonomy to assess patients’ needs, coordinate care, and solve problems independently. This has resulted in higher levels of patient satisfaction, lower costs, and more engaged employees.
This is in contrast to traditional healthcare systems, which are often structured hierarchically, with nurses and other frontline staff bound by strict protocols and, as such, can face delays in seeking approval for changes. Buurtzorg’s success is a good example of how a more collaborative and decentralised approach that values autonomy and decision-making at the frontline can foster better outcomes for both employees and patients.
And they are not alone; other organisations have notably adopted decentralised, collaborative management models. Morning Star, a Californian-based tomato processing company, operates with a self-management structure, allowing employees to make decisions independently, boosting accountability and innovation. W.L. Gore & Associates, known for Gore-Tex, has a flat structure where leadership is based on influence, encouraging creativity and quick adaptation. Valve, a video game company, has no traditional managers, enabling employees to choose projects based on passion, which fosters high engagement.
Organisational psychologists, such as John Amaechi, have challenged old-style command-and-control management, suggesting it is looking increasingly anachronistic in fast-changing environments where rapid, decentralised decision-making is crucial. So how are organisations meant to operate? What evidence is there concerning what works? And given that organisations are made up of people, what part does behavioural science have in helping to ensure organisations, in terms of their structure, processes and culture, are well equipped to operate in new ways?
To explore this, it is helpful to first consider the different ‘eras’ of management practices so we can see just how different the requirements are for today’s organisations than in the past, and why.
Three Eras of Management Practices
Rita McGrath helpfully identifies three distinct eras in the development of management practices, each reflecting how organisations have necessarily adapted to the challenges of their time. The first, named the Era of Execution, emerged during the Industrial Revolution. At this time organisations were seen as machines, which meant that efficiency, predictability, and scalability where prioritised. This led to hierarchical command-and-control structures that enforced standardised workflows and quality control measures. Of course, while we cannot underestimate the success of this model, its very strength of rigidity offering stability and consistency also meant there was little room for flexibility or rapid adaptation.
This was followed, writes McGrath, by the Era of Expertise. This gained prominence in the mid-20th century, shifting the focus to knowledge work and specialisation. The era introduced new management theories rooted in the social sciences, and managers were encouraged to move away from their formerly authoritarian positions to become coaches, emphasising employee engagement, emotional intelligence, and the importance of adaptability. However, even in this era, rigid processes often remained embedded in organisational structures, the bane of many workers lives as they were perceived as stifling innovation and responsiveness in dynamic environments.
So where does that leave us today? McGrath suggests we are now in the Era of Empathy where flexibility and inclusivity are needed, alongside creating meaningful experiences for the workforce and wider stakeholders (such as the communities in which organisations operate). Managers are now expected to operate quite differently, building networks, fostering collaboration, and leading with emotional intelligence.
But are these shifts merely passing trends in management practices or do they actually reflect changes that are needed for organisations to be successful? A meta-analysis undertaken by Lindy Greer and colleagues of 54 studies across a total of 13,914 teams suggests the latter. Their findings showed, on balance, that hierarchy tends to negatively impact team performance, creativity, decision-making speed, and adaptability, all of which are crucial for long-term organisational success
A more recent study by Fengli Xu and colleagues in 2022 analysed data from over 89,000 scientific publications and found teams with flatter structures, where leadership roles are more evenly distributed, tend to produce more innovative and impactful research.
So there does seem to be empirical support that a shift away from command-and-control management can result in positive outcomes. But what is the human story that underpins making this work?
Mindsets: Shifting Toward a More Adaptive Perspective
To explore this we can draw on Carol Dweck’s Fixed and Growth Mindset Theory that offers, (as we have set out previously), helpful insights into the way beliefs about abilities influence performance. A Fixed Mindset, which sees talent as static, encourages hierarchical systems that discourage collaboration and risk-taking as it assumes those with greatest talent are not only few and far between but are typically at the top of the organisation. In contrast, Dweck proposes that a Growth Mindset encourages learning and adaptability, enabling people to experiment, iterate, and work out how to thrive in dynamic environments. This move from the ‘know it alls’ to the ‘learn it alls’ has been hugely influential and challenges many organisations to rethink their culture.
We can extend this thinking further with a paper by leadership researchers Jon Stokes and Sue Dopson who argue for a similar shift they describe as Ego to Eco. They argue we need to be moving away from traditional, hierarchical ‘Ego-centred’ leadership models toward a more interconnected and systemic ‘Eco-centred’ approach. On this basis, leaders need to evolve beyond traditional (vertical) top-down decision-making to embrace a mindset that values (horizontal) collective intelligence and participatory collaboration. This shift enables organisations to respond more dynamically to complex challenges, creating an environment where diverse perspectives contribute to problem-solving and innovation
Given the research appears to back this up, what can organisations do to encourage Eco-centred leadership, and how can behavioural science help?
From Ego to Eco: Behavioural Science and Transformation
Usefully, Stokes and Dopson identify five key capabilities for leaders adopting Eco-centred approaches, each of which have behavioural implications. We look at each of these and their behavioural implications in turn:
Shaping the Conversation: When a leader speaks, the desired effect is not only to describe a given reality, but also to change that social reality. This reinforces the need for understanding the psychology of the way ‘scripts’ (agreed narratives) can close down certain ways of thinking; success then requires leaders to unearth these ‘social silences’ and tackle the ‘awkward’ truths that are quietly shaping the organisation.
Cultivating Collective Intelligence: It is increasingly recognised that knowledge is less about what happens in individual brains, and more to do with communities of brains working together and dividing up ‘cognitive labour’. This means behaviourally informed ways to optimise collaborative working and sharing knowledge but also understanding the mechanisms by which know-how spreads and becomes currency.
Examine the Context: Taking a behavioural approach allows a better understanding of the wider ecosystem the organisation is operating in. Some systems are ‘simple’ (meaning conventional best practice guidance can be used to determine strategy) whilst other systems organisations find themselves in can be complex (meaning it is important to set broad goals and monitor for patterns to adapt as things clarify).
Co-Creating Structures: The notion that there is a perfect structure for an organisation can be misleading; instead, it is better to think of structure as something that needs to be evolved together with members. This means structures are more likely to reflect the needs and realities of the organisation as a whole, but also give people a sense of ownership and accountability. In addition, it helps to rein in senior leaders who are prone to overestimating both their own skill levels relative to others and the (unrealistic) positivity of outcomes stemming from their personal decisions.
Pluralising Participation: Encouraging pluralistic participation aligns with behavioural findings that diverse teams often outperform homogeneous groups by bringing varied perspectives to complex problems to inform and shape decision-making. Leaders are therefore encouraged to facilitate conversations that foster psychological safety and openness, enabling inclusive teams to challenge norms and generate innovative solutions.
We can see the way that ‘Eco-leadership’, as envisioned by Stokes and Dopson (and adapted by us), embraces complexity and fosters inclusivity which enables organisations to thrive in uncertainty. And with a more explicitly behavioural understanding within these Eco-leadership capabilities, organisations can create cultures that are not only more adaptive but also more human-centred.
Making change happen
We cannot underestimate how difficult this fundamental shift can be from Ego to Eco: it requires letting go of deeply embedded structures that often enabled an organisation's success in the first place. But it also requires encouraging people to interact the organisation (and hence each other) in quite different ways.
So what can we do to bridge this gap? We suggest a small number of simple guiding principles to support this transition (with a handy mnemonic!):
Evaluate: The opportunity to give and receive feedback in real-time allows people to quickly monitor and evaluate understanding of changing conditions and stakeholder needs.
Co-create: Encouraging employees and stakeholders to bring their own perspectives, experiences and skills to a problem in a collaborative manner plays to the value that comes from collective intelligence (but also supports the collective emotional state of an organisation of course).
Ownership: Rather than simply guiding behaviour implicitly, there is a need to help people and teams develop the skills and mastery to drive change. The finding that people look to the bottom of the status hierarchy, rather than the top, for information about social norms suggests this has real potential for driving fundamental organisational culture change.
By integrating these elements, we suggest that organisations can create adaptive, participatory environments that allow for a more rounded ‘Eco-culture’. We can look at this more tangibly by focusing on the pressing issue of cybersecurity within organisations.
Case study: An Eco approach to cybersecurity
There are huge risks for organisations with cyber-security threats getting ever more sophisticated as AI tools become available to criminals. This has led the World Economic Forum to estimate that the global cost of cybercrime will jump to $23.84 trillion by 2027, up from $8.44 trillion in 2022.
The responsibility for managing cybersecurity behaviours in the workforce often falls to IT teams, but of course, their expertise often lies in technical problem-solving rather than risk communication. And many of the current approaches to cybersecurity all too often seem to reflect a top-down, directive (‘Ego’) style where IT teams act as authority figures, broadcasting facts and expecting compliance.
This approach treats employees as passive recipients of information rather than active participants in shaping cybersecurity practices. By contrast, an Eco-centred approach would shift the focus toward a more dynamic, participatory system that engages employees in co-creating cybersecurity solutions. This would involve fostering ‘relational trust’, as researchers Karen Cook, Russell Hardin and Margaret Levi suggest, where employees and IT teams build strong networks of communication and shared understanding.
So how can we take our behavioural ‘Eco’ principles into cybersecurity strategies? Ways this can be done include:
Evaluate: Real-time feedback mechanisms, such as automated alerts after simulated phishing exercises, security failures and near misses, can help employees internalise lessons and adjust their behaviours straight away. For example, an employee who clicks a fake phishing link could receive instant feedback explaining why the email was suspicious, embedding the lesson into their day-to-day awareness.
Co-creation: Organisations could host regular discussions where, in a safe space, employees are able to share their own experiences with suspicious emails and together with the IT team refine cybersecurity protocols. This leverages collective ‘hive’ intelligence to understand what good looks like for countering evolving threats.
Ownership: Finally, employees can be empowered to develop protocols that help others identify and address subtle contextual anomalies in emails. For instance, a workforce designing ways to get to know each other better, then it will be easier for them to recognise the very nuanced ways that an email might be suspicious (e.g. does not have quite the right sort of signature format or comes from an unexpected sender who does not normally email at that time of day) and needs to be checked out.
We can see through this simple approach that current cybersecurity practices are too often rooted in an Ego-centred orientation that emphasises compliance over collaboration. Behavioural science can be a more effective support to building a much more robust Eco-orientation to cyber-security, critical given the high risk, dynamic landscape of cybercrime.
Conclusion
The journey from rigid, Ego-centred organisational structures to dynamic, Eco-centred systems is not just a theoretical nicety; it seems an essential evolution given the high-risk dynamic environment organisations now operate within. Organisations are under pressure to adopt flexibility, inclusivity, and collaboration, prioritising human connection alongside operational efficiency.
Behavioural science has an important role to play here, bridging the gap between Ego-centred and Eco-centred cultures. In cybersecurity, for instance, these principles are much needed to help organisations to shift from compliance-driven, top-down approaches to participatory Ecosystems that foster trust, adaptability, and resilience.
What is needed are not only structural changes to organisation structures but a fundamental rethink of organisational mindsets. In this context, behavioural science needs to be more than a tool for guiding behaviour, acting as a catalyst for creating human-centred organisations that can thrive in uncertain conditions.