ideas-groupDecisionMaking-hierarchyAsSimplification

What is the point of a hierarchical decision-making structure?

One point is clearly game-theoretic; it is a class of attractor states of systems in which individuals compete and conflict.

But there is another reasons, one that interests me due to my view that "information overload" is one of the main issues of our times.

Hierarchy allows an organization to present a simple interface layer to the outside world, and to itself. It allows an organization to present itself as a unitary entity, hiding some of complexity of all the differing individual viewpoints within that organization (i speak in deliberate analogy with the arguments in favor of object-oriented programming). This allows people from outside the organization to have a compact mental representation of its state; "the President of Organization Y said that they plan to do X and don't support Z", instead of, "I talked to Jenny, who said they plan to do X and that few of them support Z, and to Bob, who said he hopes they don't do X, and that he supports Z but no one else seems to, and to Kim, who from past experience seems to be more in-the-know than Jenny and Bob who says that X seems to be a go and that the most influential among them are trying to persuade the others to support Z."