This is just a simple case of serialization. Having worked on 10+ game engines and other scene graph based applications I would prefer a more flexible reference based approach.
Instead of hard coding your hierarchy into the structure of XML or JSON. Define some basic type information (unique id and node type).
If you have situations where an object can be referenced before it is defined simply make a proxy loading type that listens for it to load.
After that it is a cakewalk:
[
{
id: "UUID OR Rolling Number Per File OR DB Index OR ...",
type: "business",
name: "Dunder Mifflin Paper Company, Inc."
description: "look at me I can be a root type for the graph OR one of many!"
offices: [
list of ids of objects of type "office" or object that wraps this with other metadata (relation object)
]
},
... potentially other business entries,
{
id: see above...
type: "office",
name: "Scranton Branch",
description: "This can describe each branch"
departments: [
list of ids of objects of type "department" or object that wraps this with other metadata
]
},
... other offices,
{
id: see above...,
type: "department",
name: "sales",
members: [
list of ids of objects of type "employee" or object that wraps this with other metadata
]
},
... other departments,
{
id: see above...,
type: "employee",
title: "manager",
name: "Michael Scott",
reports: [
list of ids of objects of type "employee" or object that wraps this with other metadata
]
},
{
id: see above...,
type: "employee",
title: "sales man",
name: "Dwight Schrute",
reports: [
id of self since Dwight needs someone he can trust,
{
id: see above...,
type: "report_meta",
reportee: id of Pam,
visibility: "secret"
}
]
},
... other employees,
etc.,
etc.
]