Return-to-office fights and AI angst mask a simpler question for leaders: do we still need the layers we built for a different era? A growing set of firms have answered no. They did not win by rhetoric about empowerment. They changed the operating system.
The Dutch system that cut the middle and kept the care
Buurtzorg, a home-care organization in the Netherlands, scaled to more than 900 self-managing teams of up to 12 nurses and roughly 14,700 employees as of January 2021, with only two directors and about 50 people in the back office and no middle managers or supervisors at all (Martela and Nandram, 2025). Instead of bosses, roughly 21 internal coaches support about 950 teams, a ratio above 1 to 45, and the coaches have no formal authority and no responsibility for team productivity (Martela and Nandram, 2025). The model relies on frontline professionals who decide how best to serve clients, coordinate locally, and use a simple IT backbone.
The case evidence reports administrative overhead that was historically low relative to the sector, 8 percent for Buurtzorg versus an industry average of 25 percent in Dutch home care, based on KPMG figures from around 2015, not a current number (Martela and Nandram, 2025). This is not a miracle of cheap labor. The hourly cost reported for Buurtzorg was higher than peers, €54.47 versus €48.74, a reminder that value can show up in outcomes, not in wage suppression (Martela and Nandram, 2025). The authors are careful about where the model seems to work: lower interdependence between teams, highly motivated and competent frontline staff, and services that can be standardized into coherent chunks are the boundary conditions they identify, and the article is a peer-reviewed case rather than an experiment (Martela and Nandram, 2025).
Seen as operations design, the pattern is blunt. Buurtzorg shrank headquarters, shifted decisions to the edge, and substituted light coaching and shared infrastructure for supervisors. It did not abolish management. It moved it into the work.
California tomatoes, no bosses, and a contract everyone can read
Morning Star, the largest tomato processor in the United States by share of processed tomatoes, has operated for more than two decades without managers, with about 400 full-time colleagues and revenue above 700 million dollars in 2010, according to a detailed Harvard Business Review account by Gary Hamel (Hamel, 2011). People have no titles and no bosses. Instead, they draft Colleague Letters of Understanding that specify commitments, peers influence pay decisions, and authority follows expertise and accountability rather than position (Hamel, 2011). The firm’s founder reported sustained double-digit growth in volumes, revenue, and profits over twenty years, funded largely from internal sources, set against a mature industry that grew around 1 percent annually. That is management-by-market, not management-by-manager, and it is anchored in a heavy-asset, seasonal, quality-critical industry, which rebuts the claim that self-management is limited to white-collar or boutique services (Hamel, 2011).
This is still case reportage from one company rather than experimental evidence. Even so, it shows a repeatable mechanism. Replace supervisory layers with clear, peer-negotiated contracts, and make the cost of poor performance visible to the team that bears it.
China’s microenterprises on platforms, not under bosses
Haier, one of the world’s best-known appliance makers, reorganized into self-managed microenterprises under then-CEO Zhang Ruimin, a transformation documented in a Harvard Business School teaching case by Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Nancy Hua Dai (Kanter and Dai, 2018). The case describes business platforms spanning multiple sectors on which microenterprises are incubated, with platform owners explicitly not acting as supervisors of the microenterprises. The goal, captured in the RenDanHeYi philosophy, was to remove internal walls and bring employees and users into “zero distance,” turning both into direct stakeholders in value creation, according to the case description (Kanter and Dai, 2018). This is not a startup story. It is a large, diversified company using platforms and contracts to replace command chains with market-like coordination.
A teaching case is not a controlled study. What it offers is institutional detail that validates the architecture: autonomous units with P&L-like accountability, platform services instead of bosses, and formal separation between enabling roles and supervisory authority.
The contours of a map
Put the Dutch, American, and Chinese designs side by side and a map emerges. First, carve the work into small, customer-anchored units that can own outcomes. Buurtzorg’s 10 to 12-person teams visiting patients in a neighborhood, Morning Star’s crews defined by production and quality goals, and Haier’s microenterprises tied to platforms all fit this cut (Martela and Nandram, 2025; Hamel, 2011; Kanter and Dai, 2018).
Second, replace hierarchy with explicit contracts and enabling services. Morning Star’s peer agreements substitute for boss approvals (Hamel, 2011). Haier’s platforms provide shared services and governance without supervising, a separation the case makes explicit (Kanter and Dai, 2018). Buurtzorg relies on coaches without formal power plus a streamlined back office, which together enable teams to solve for the client rather than for a superior’s preferences (Martela and Nandram, 2025).
Third, honor the boundary conditions. Self-management scales best where teams are modular and people can act as professionals, a point underlined by the Buurtzorg authors. They also caution that some celebrated numbers have time stamps and context. The 8 versus 25 percent overhead comparison comes from KPMG estimates around 2015, not a permanent fact, and the hourly rate comparison runs the other way, with Buurtzorg costlier per hour than peers at €54.47 versus €48.74 (Martela and Nandram, 2025). The lesson is to measure what matters to customers and society, not just internal cost ratios.
Finally, notice the ecosystem. The ideas do not live in isolation. A global community of practice congregates, debates, and cross-pollinates. The Corporate Rebels network, which convenes hundreds of pioneering organizations and features voices such as Frederic Laloux, Jos de Blok, and Lisa Gill, illustrates the spread of self-management across sectors and geographies, including the oft-cited Buurtzorg with about 15,000 nurses organized in autonomous teams, according to their summit materials for 2025 (Corporate Rebels, 2025). This is anecdotal reportage, but it signals demand, supply, and a body of craft beyond a lone case.
What leaders should do next
Treat self-management as design, not ideology. Start by mapping work into units that face a customer or user directly. Define decision rights in writing. Where you once placed a manager, place a platform, a peer contract, or a coach with no formal authority. Pilot in domains that look like Buurtzorg’s boundary conditions, where teams can act with low interdependence and high professionalism. If you want numbers, track retention, cycle time, rework, and client outcomes, not just headcount and overhead. The world already offers a map. Your task is to choose where on it you can travel first.
Sources
- Martela and Nandram (2025). Buurtzorg: scaling up an organization with hundreds of self-managing teams but no middle managers. Documents Buurtzorg’s structure, coach model, boundary conditions, and historical overhead and hourly cost comparisons. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41469-024-00184-y
- Hamel (2011). First, Let's Fire All the Managers. Describes Morning Star’s no-boss system, peer contracts, scale, and performance claims in a heavy-industry context. https://hbr.org/2011/12/first-lets-fire-all-the-managers
- Kanter and Dai (2018). Haier: Incubating Entrepreneurs in a Chinese Giant (HBS Case 318-104). Details Haier’s microenterprise model, platform roles that do not supervise, and the RenDanHeYi philosophy. https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=54098
- Corporate Rebels (2025). Corporate Rebels Summit 2025 — Laloux, Jos de Blok, Lisa Gill. Reports the global community of self-managed organizations and cites Buurtzorg’s scale as context. https://www.corporate-rebels.com/blog/big-news-frederic-laloux-jos-de-blok-lisa-gill-at-corporate-rebels-summit-2025