The Collegial Phenomenon

This book examines cooperation among rival partners in a Northeastern US corporate law firm. Members are portrayed as interdependent entrepreneurs who build social niches in their firm, and both cultivate and mitigate status competition among themselves. This behaviour generates informal social mechanisms that help a flat organization to govern itself. The resulting theory of the collegial organization generalizes its results to partnerships, larger multinational professional services firms, and collegial pockets in flattening bureaucracies.