As a consultant I visit lots of different organizations each with their own management structure. Most of the time there is only one constant; a big hierarchy of managers who manage managers who manage managers who manage the working bees(probably I missed some management layers in between, but you get the idea…).
I always believed that a flatter organizational structure benefits the whole company(and creates less overhead). But I didn’t see a lot of examples in the wild. 2 successful organizations who took this to the extreme are GitHub and Valve(they have no managers at all!).
Are you interested in how they did this? Have a look at Valve’s handbook for new employees:
And watch this presentation by Zach Holman, one of the founders of GitHub: