Earlier quoted context omitted.
yes, exactly. the whole point of layers of management is to insulate upper managers from the decisions they make, particularly those that slight the customer or the front-line worker. a more generous phrasing would be that insolation allows managers to take emotions out of a situation to make the most rational decisions for the business (and its shareholders). in any case, direct relationships are a big deal for soci…
I think that's a side effect, not the primary reason for introducing layers of management. The real reason is, you just can't scale am organization without it. Managers are there for enforcing accountability. If directors have few enough reports to enforce accountability on their own, there is no need for a manager.
Re: Google Employee Alleges Discrimination Against Pregnant Women in Viral Memo
#131adding management layers is just one way to solve the coordination problem caused by scaling (which you do because you think the business can become more profitable). you can also scale a business horizontally rather than vertically, but that doesn't have the property of shielding executives from their decisions, nor of centrally controlling information (which allows them to capture more of the value produced by the firm). vertical scaling is preferred by managers for these properties, not because it's how you must scale.