ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE

Framing Liberation Management as the Bundling of Practices: An Adoption Process with a Two-Fold Coherence

Matthieu Battistelli¹, Anne-Sophie Dubey^2,3 and Caroline Mattelin-Pierrard^4,*

¹University Savoie Mont Blanc, IREGE, Chambéry, France
²Institut interdisciplinaire de l’innovation (I³) - Centre de recherche en gestion (CRG), École Polytechnique, CNRS (UMR 9217), Institut Polytechnique de Paris, Palaiseau, France
³La Fabrique de l’industrie
⁴Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, PRISM, Sorbonne School of Management, Paris, France

 

 

Abstract

Introduction

The liberated company, a concept that has recently been widely covered in the media, was brought back into the spotlight by Isaac Getz in 2009. Since then, several companies, especially French ones (e.g., Décathlon, Kiabi, and Michelin), have begun the process of liberation in their organisation (Getz, 2016a). This refers to the process of adopting a liberated company structure, an ‘organizational form in which employees have complete freedom and responsibility to take actions that they, not their managers, decide are best’ (Getz, 2009, p. 34). However, as a growing number of companies are adopting or considering adopting liberation management (Ramboarison-Lalao & Gannouni, 2019), this little-known process deserves further analysis. Indeed, studies using a process approach are mostly focused on the liberating leader (Carney & Getz, 2009; Sferrazzo & Ruffini, 2019) or specific ethnographic studies (Karsenty, 2019). Fanny Fox’s (2020) dissertation uses the sociology of translation (Akrich et al., 2013). Weil and Dubey (2020), on the other hand, identify several potential trajectories for liberation, but they focus solely on the initiation of the process. There is thus a knowledge gap about the management of the entire liberation process, even though many authors highlight its complexity (Fox, 2020; Karsenty, 2019; Rousseau & Ruffier, 2017). They show that this process can vary, especially in the timeline for adopting practices, since there is ‘neither a model’ ‘nor a method for liberation’ (Getz, 2016b, p. 416, our translation), calling into question ‘the process of radical transformation that makes it possible to construct [a liberated company]’ (Getz, 2016b, p. 412, our translation). Managing liberation can thus be approached from the angle of its management practices. Firstly, the liberated company is understood as a set of practices (Picard, 2015; Warrick et al., 2016), as in Hamel and Breen (2007, pp. 90–91) who studied the ‘original’ and ‘radical management practices’ of W.L. Gore & Associates. The practice approach has also been recommended by Gilbert et al. who suggest that researchers proceed with caution because of the media coverage of liberated companies: they should distance themselves from arguments for or against and ‘should avoid seeing management rhetoric as a simple reflection of actual company practices’ (2018a, p. 109, our translation).

This is the context in which we ask: how is the process of adopting or rejecting liberated company management practices is?

While this question seems important from both a theoretical and management point of view, the liberated company literature currently lacks an analytical framework to answer it. Given this observation, it seems appropriate to turn to the management innovation literature, such as Fox (2020) and Hamel and Breen (2007). In this case, the adoption of liberated company practices can be seen as a ‘problem-solving process in which a product or practice that already exists is acquired and used by an organisation (which may or may not have generated the managerial innovation) to address the recognised needs and solve identified problems’ (Damanpour, 2014, pp. 1270–1271).

Through its comparison of two case studies of liberated companies, Lippi and Ecomobil,¹ this study makes several contributions. Firstly, we point to the existence of a process involving three bundles of practices whose content is coherent, i.e., configurations of interdependent practices (cf. MacDuffie, 1995): communication, support, and empowerment. Secondly, we find temporal coherence in the adoption of management practices, i.e., the preferred timeline for sustaining liberation. Thus, this process has both content and temporal coherence. Thirdly, this research sheds light on the extent of transformation necessary for liberation and helps managers to anticipate difficulties to avoid employee discontent (Aigouy & Granata, 2017).

This article is organised as follows. Firstly, we present the conceptual framework of our research, which is based on a combination of literature on the liberated company and on the adoption of management innovation. We then describe our exploratory qualitative method based on the comparison of two cases. Based on our results showing double coherence (content and temporal) in the adoption of management practices, we make recommendations about a process that makes it possible to sustain liberation in companies.

Conceptual framework

Understanding liberated companies through their management practices

The liberated company is the subject of many debates, especially about its definition. While Getz’s definition is the most widely used, it has been called ‘broad’ and ‘rough’, making it difficult to operationalise and thus hindering the precise identification of liberated companies (Chabanet et al., 2017).

To address this limitation, many authors have chosen to consider the liberated company as a set of unspecified practices (Picard, 2015; Warrick et al., 2016). Based on a review of the literature, recent research (Mattelin-Pierrard, 2019) has found 13 management practices common to liberated companies (cf. Table 1) ‘referr[ing] to managerial day-to-day work, which may include setting objectives and procedures, developing talent and meeting demands from different stakeholders’ (Vaccaro et al., 2012, p. 139). The literature on liberated companies also suggests that these practices can be grouped together into bundles. According to MacDuffie (1995) and Delery and Doty (1996), these bundles are specific configurations of interdependent practices (i.e., they are combined in a coherent way to work towards the same end). In the liberated company framework, several authors have highlighted the importance of having coherent sets of practices (Gilbert et al., 2018b; Warrick et al., 2016). A multitude of combinations is possible, which suggests that there can be local arrangements with different adoption timeframes (Rousseau & Ruffier, 2017, p. 114).

Table 1. The management practices of liberated companies identified in the literature (adapted and supplemented from Mattelin-Pierrard, 2019²)

Practices		Description
1.	Self-managed teams	Most work is done in self-managed work teams in which decisions are made by the team and employees are expected to develop their skills according to their needs (Bernstein et al., 2016; Foss, 2003). Managers can also be co-opted into these teams.
2.	Integration of support functions*	‘Taking tasks that had been dispersed across functional areas and integrating them into core operational teams (small groups of employees)’ (Gilbert, Teglborg et al., 2017, p. 42, our translation).
3.	Information transparency (both strategic and operational)	Information transparency refers to employees’ ability to obtain the strategic and operational information they need to do their work (Arnaud et al., 2016; Hamel & Breen, 2007).
4.	Supporting role of managers	The role of managers is changing as control and authority are disappearing in favour of the following: inspiring, translating strategic vision to daily work, and embodying the company’s values (Gilbert, Raulet Croset et al., 2017). Middle management is moving towards a coaching role (Fox & Pichault, 2017) and facilitating the work of frontline employees (Holtz, 2017).
5.	Personalised support	Employees are supported as they become autonomous in their work as well as in their personal development (Gilbert et al., 2020; Picard & Islam, 2020; Warrick et al., 2016). Managers play a key role here (Getz, 2009; Ravasi & Verona, 2001).
6.	Participative decision-making	Employees are free to make whatever decisions they need to do their work (Getz, 2009). They are also involved in other functions, especially human resources (recruitment of future colleagues, etc.) (Battistelli, 2019). Strategic decision-making (e.g., setting the company’s vision) often remains a management responsibility (Gilbert, Teglborg et al., 2017).
7.	The right to make mistakes	The right to make mistakes is essential in liberating employees’ actions (Colle et al., 2017; Carney & Getz, 2009). This right to make mistakes, however, occurs within the framework of the company’s vision (Brière, 2017) and is accompanied by a perspective that mistakes made are part of a continuous learning objective (Peters, 1992).
8.	Self-direction*	Employees have the freedom of initiative, which they are encouraged to exercise (Getz, 2009). Self-direction is related to the empowerment and accountability of employees (Hamel, 2011; Jacquinot & Pellissier-Tanon, 2015).
9.	Flexible working organisation*	Depending on the company, employees can choose their working hours and location or customise their workspaces (Getz, 2009; Sferrazzo & Ruffini, 2019). They can also work on projects linked to their interests and sometimes create their own job descriptions (Getz, 2012; Hamel & Breen, 2007).
10.	Abolishment of external signs of power*	Any signs, symbols, or practices that create a sense of inequality among employees are eliminated (Aigouy & Granata, 2017) such as reserved parking spots or offices (Carney & Getz, 2009; Rousseau & Ruffier, 2017).
11.	Creation of spaces for interaction*	Community-building is promoted by devoting physical and temporal spaces to informal or formal interaction (Carney & Getz, 2009; Colle et al., 2017; Picard, 2015).
12.	Employee participation in strategy development*	Some liberated companies involve employees in the development of strategy (Getz, 2016b; Lee & Edmondson, 2017). However, in most cases, employees are informed about strategy but do not participate in shaping it (Carney & Getz, 2009).
13.	Sharing of created value*	In line with the aims of liberated companies (Gilbert, Teglborg et al., 2017), the value created by the company is redistributed through profit-sharing, bonuses, etc.

Therefore, beyond identifying the practices of liberated companies in a static way, we propose to take a process approach that makes it possible to observe their adoption dynamically.

The adoption of liberated company practices: From a static to a process approach

In the literature, we see two approaches to the liberation of companies. The first is focused on the actions of the liberating leader (Getz, 2009, 2012; Sferrazzo & Ruffini, 2019) that can, however, create normative pressure potentially leading to ‘dark sides’ (Picard & Islam, 2020, p. 4). In this approach, which is particularly relevant in studying the adoption of liberated company practices from a leadership perspective, the liberating leader actively shares the company’s vision from the beginning of the process so that everyone can feel involved in it.

A second approach arises in the research of Weil and Dubey (2020, pp. 106–108). They distinguish between two possible initiations of liberated companies: ‘changeover’ liberations, which take a seemingly radical, irreversible approach; ‘experimental’ liberations, which are more reversible and encourage a trial-and-error approach. The choice to engage in one path or the other leads to different adoption processes, especially in management practices. For example, Weil and Dubey find that changeover liberations are ‘sometimes perceived as abrupt by employees and disruptive by middle managers’ (op. cit., p. 106, our translation), as previously observed by Fox and Pichault (2017).

We have thus identified two main process approaches in the liberated company literature. However, the first is focused on the actions of the liberating leader and does not offer insights into all the practices in the process. The second does not look at the entire process of liberation² because it is focused on its initiation. Research is therefore required on the management of liberation throughout the process and at the organisational level. To this end, we turn to the management innovation literature because several authors have already addressed the liberated company in this vein (Bardon & Josserand, 2018; Birkinshaw et al., 2008; Fox, 2020; Hamel & Breen, 2007; Lam, 2005). Moreover, this literature offers a process analysis framework allowing us to analyse liberation from a management perspective.

The adoption process for liberated company practices through the lens of the management innovation literature

The management innovation literature makes it possible to address the adoption of liberated company management practices as a process. Management innovation has been defined as ‘the invention³ and implementation of a management practice, process, structure, or technique that is new to the state of the art and is intended to further organisational goals’ (Birkinshaw et al., 2008, p. 828). While the adoption of a management innovation can be seen as the result of a decision whether to adopt an innovation at a given time or not (Bocquet & Dubouloz, 2015), it can also be understood as a process (Birkinshaw et al., 2008; Damanpour et al., 2018; Dubouloz, 2013).

The adoption of a management innovation is generally presented as a sequential and linear process in the literature. In reality, this process can involve feedback loops that play an important role in improving and refining these innovations. There can also be overlap between steps or, on the other hand, some missing steps (Akbar et al., 2018; Damanpour, 2020). However, this approach by phases has the important advantage of simplifying reality and thus represents a first step in understanding the complex process of the adoption of liberated company practices, which has not yet been fully studied from a management practices perspective. In fact, the phases represent temporal brackets that are constructed as progressions of events and actions separated by identifiable discontinuities in the temporal flow, making it possible for researchers to examine patterns and the accumulation of progress (Langley et al., 2013). This adoption process has been formalised into several multi-sequence models of two to seven phases (Damanpour, 2020; Dubouloz, 2013; Khosravi et al., 2019).

In this article, we use the three phases outlined by Dubouloz (2013): (1) Initiation and decision, (2) Implementation, (3) Routinisation. There are two main reasons for this choice. Firstly, a process with many phases increases the difficulty in determining the transition of one phase to another: the boundaries between the periods of analysis can be just as ambiguous as the boundaries between supposedly distinct processes (Langley, 1997). As a result Dubouloz (2013) and Damanpour (2020) suggest focusing on the phases that have clearly established boundaries. Secondly, it seems crucial to differentiate between the implementation and routinisation phases. This distinction allows us to better observe change over time, which comes in handy considering that routinisation seems especially difficult for liberated companies (Fox & Pichault, 2017). Carney and Getz (2009) recommend that liberating leaders ‘stay alert’, and Lam (2005) points to the difficulties experienced by the Oticon company, which Carney and Getz (2009) identify as a liberated company, in maintaining its adhocratic structure over time. As for Picard (2015, p. 363, our translation), she concludes that liberation cannot happen once and for all. Therefore, it seems important for us to examine how the process of adopting or rejecting liberated company management practices is constructed.

By applying the phases from the management innovation literature to the adoption of liberated company practices (see Table 2), we have tried to pinpoint the transition from one phase to the other. In our case, we base this on the assessment of the organisation’s members. Adopting practices in an organisation means that the individuals who make up the organisation adopt them (Rogers, 1995; Frambach & Schillewaert, 2002).

Table 2. Studying liberated companies through the lens of the adoption process for a management innovation

Phases	1. Initiation and decision	2. Implementation	3. Routinisation
Description (adapted from Dubouloz, 2013)	All activities related to the perception of needs or problems, the search for solutions, the collection of information for those solutions, the shaping of attitudes about them, and evaluating them to make a decision to adopt or reject liberated company practices (Rogers, 1995).	All events and actions related to the preparation for implementation, exploratory implementation, and the initial use of liberated company practices. This includes adaptations and modifications.	Liberated company practices are common and widespread and become a standard feature of the organisation. (Damanpour, 1991). This is the end of the adoption process (Rogers, 1995).
Assessment by organisation members	The organisation’s members identify problems and become aware of a need. They discover the existence of liberated companies, evaluate the relevance of this approach to their organisation, communicate and discuss the matter, and make the decision to adopt these practices (Damanpour & Schneider, 2006).	Organisation members accept or resist the use of liberated company practices (Damanpour & Schneider, 2006).	The end of the adoption process is one way to judge its success. Routinisation has happened when the organisation’s members involved choose to use liberated company practices (Damanpour, 2014). The approach is applied to ‘its fullest potential’ (Wolfe, 1994, p. 411). The liberated company is no longer perceived as different. It is difficult to determine exactly when the adoption is complete (Alänge et al., 1998).

This table, used as a framework for analysis, thus makes it possible (1) to identify the phase in which management practices are adopted, i.e., during the initiation, implementation, or routinisation phase, (2) to analyse which practices are coherent with each other in terms of content.

Methodology: An exploratory, qualitative study

This research aims to better describe how the process of adapting so-called liberated management practices is constructed. To this end, we focus our analysis on a comparison of two companies: Ecomobil and Lippi. In this section, we explain why it is appropriate to compare these two cases and then provide a detailed presentation of the methodological approach we have chosen, i.e., narration, and our method of analysis.

Comparability of two contrasting cases of liberated companies

We are using two case studies, an appropriate method when observing a new phenomenon (Yin, 2013). This method allows for a detailed understanding of the adoption process for liberation management.

The two selected companies are liberated companies in terms of their structures, processes, and practices, as shown in the presentations in Box 1. Nevertheless, Ecomobil and Lippi have differences at the organisational level and in the choices made during the liberation process. Both SMEs operate in markets with different dynamics and constraints. While Lippi took the opportunity to transform into a liberated company during a difficult economic period (succession and financial crisis), Ecomobil carried out a radical transformation of its organisational model by adopting holacracy during a period of business growth. The company had gained a leading position in a niche market (the design of organic grocery stores).

Box 1. Presentation of the cases

Table 3 highlights the ‘contextual contrast’ (Vigour, 2005, p. 208, our translation) between the two cases. This contrast underpins the methodological relevance of comparing these two cases despite the different motivations for adopting liberation management. The comparison that we carry out maintains the different social and organisational features of the two adoption processes while also showing shared patterns. The relevance of comparing contrasting and even atypical cases according to time, geography, and culture criteria has been recognised in the literature (Hugues, 1996; Detienne, 2000). There is a dual ambition: maximise the differences in the compared cases to highlight partially similar mechanisms (De Verdalle et al., 2012) and question how a common goal – adopting a management innovation like the liberated company approach – is perceived and pursued by participants in different environments (Longo, 2012).

Table 3. Description of Lippi and Ecomobil

Characteristics	Lippi	Ecomobil
Business activity	Manufacturer of fences and gates Steel processing	Retail store design Wood working
Company type	Family-owned business	Company bought out by two young entrepreneurs in 2006
Revenue	24M€	12M€
Number of employees	180 employees	70 employees
Company strategy	Reorganisation of the business to cope with a globalised market Leap in value strategy	High growth (five-fold increase in revenue from 2006 to 2017) Niche strategy
Initial motivations for liberation	Ensuring smooth succession Responding to the 2008 financial crisis	Increasing happiness at work Increasing the company’s resilience
Means of initiation for the liberation	Experimentation, even trial and error5	Changeover (implementation of holacracy)
Liberation periods (according to narratives)	2008–2013	Beginning in 2016

This comparison process maintains the context in which the liberated company practices were implemented, in line with the literature, which states that the implementation of management practices depends on the organisational context (Shah & Ward, 2003).

Choice of a process approach through a narrative strategy

This exploratory qualitative study is based on the narratives of the two adoption processes. This choice of approach is recommended within a process framework to study how actions and events are linked together (Dumez, 2016). We also ensured that the companies we studied had continued the liberation process long enough to allow for a longitudinal analysis.

According to Langley (1999), process research makes it possible to understand how and why a phenomenon might move in a given direction. This approach enables us to identify sequences and consider explanations in terms of the mechanisms leading to an outcome, in this case the adoption of liberated company practices. Lippi undertook most of its transformation between 2008 and 2013. For Ecomobil, the initiation of the process was clearly evident in 2016 with the implementation of holacracy. This experiment lasted until 2019; the process continued but was no longer called holacracy. In line with Dumez’s (2016, p. 124) recommendations on the narrative approach, we expanded the study period to include the pre- and post-liberation periods (according to official statements), called ‘analepsis’ and ‘prolepsis,’ respectively. In this way, we can contribute additional insights on the process studied. This led us to study 2000–2020 for Lippi and 2006–2020 for Ecomobil.

As regards the data, two of the authors participated in collecting, writing, and editing the cases that support our narratives (cf. Table 4). One of the specific features of our approach is that it is based on cases collected and written as part of the ARO project.⁶ Thus, the analysis is based on both primary and secondary data (Yin, 2013). The narrative approach is appropriate in this case because it allows for the colligation of heterogeneous data (Dumez, 2016; Dumez & Jeunemaître, 2005).

Table 4. Data sources for the monographies (see note 6)

Data collection	Lippi	Ecomobil
Primary data	A total of 29 respondents, 65 h of interviews, 900 pages of transcription by Élisabeth Bourguinat, author of the case study for the ARO project, from 2017 to 2019.	Description of situations in participant observation, daily logbook from September 2017 to September 2020.
Secondary data	CEO lecture. Book by Élisabeth Bourguinat (2019).	Owner talks. Internal documents about the initial liberation decision.
Author involvement	One author was involved in editing the monograph.	One author collected primary data and wrote the monograph. Two authors were involved in editing the monograph.

The data collection methods are thus asymmetrical, with interviews and re-analysis for the Lippi case and participant observation for Ecomobil. To counter any potential analysis bias, we make an a posteriori and heuristic comparison of the two cases (Geoffray et al., 2012). The aim is not to highlight causal relationships but to analyse the adoption of liberated company practices through the lens of the management innovation literature. This approach is consistent with the narrative approach, which consists of identifying the crystallising elements of a phenomenon to gain distance from purely causal assumptions about the course of events (Dumez, 2016).

The a posteriori comparison approach is based on (1) dialogue between the researchers working on the same study and (2) a heuristic aim to enrich the concepts under discussion without suppressing specific contextual features (Geoffray et al., 2012). (1) Following this approach, the researchers are expected to systematically call into question the interpretations each produces for the cases being compared. For this research, monographs were written to serve as the basis for the case narratives studied (see note 6). These monographs were discussed in groups of three (the author and two editors) with the aim of locating any chronological gaps or inconsistencies in the interpretation process. (2) Moreover, we generated shared lines of enquiry about the cases. In this way, despite the contrasts between the two cases, we could establish an adoption process for liberated company practices in bundles (cf. Table 5). The a posteriori comparison does not attempt to create a classification but rather to supplement the management innovation and liberated company bodies of literature to better understand the adoption process.

Table 5. Summary of practices by the phases of the adoption process for liberation management

Cases	Before liberation	Phases of adoption process for liberated company practices
		Initiation and decision	Implementation	Routinisation
LIPPI	Right to make mistakes Personalised support Bundle 1 - Information transparency - Creation of spaces for interaction	Right to make mistakes Bundle 1 Bundle 2 - Personalised support - Coaching role for managers	Right to make mistakes Bundle 1 Bundle 2 Bundle 3: - Self-managed work teams - Flexible work organisation - Participative decision-making - Self-direction	Right to make mistakes Bundle 1 Bundle 2 Bundle 3 Strategic decision-making with employee input
ECOMOBIL	Right to make mistakes Sharing of created value	Right to make mistakes Sharing of created value Bundle 3: - Self-managed work teams - Flexible work organisation - Participative decision-making - Self-direction Bundle 1: - Information transparency - Creation of spaces for interaction	Right to make mistakes Sharing of created value Bundle 1 Bundle 3 (deteriorated): - Self-managing work teams - Flexible work organisation - Strategy input from about ten employees	Right to make mistakes Sharing of created value Bundle 1 Bundle 3 (deteriorated) Bundle 2: - Personalised support - Coaching role for managers
Note: The practices in italics were adopted in the previous phase.

Data analysis

This research faces the risk of circularity, or ‘seeing in the empirical materials only that which confirms a theory’ (Dumez, 2016, p. 19). For our study, this would mean finding only the consecutive phases of the adoption of liberated company practices that are described in the literature. To manage this risk, Dumez (2016) recommends creating the theoretical and empirical specifications as independently as possible, which makes a narrative approach possible. To minimise this risk and that of equifinality, which consists of only seeing one possible explanation for a phenomenon, the narratives based on the data were cross-checked by the authors. This review made it possible to ensure that there were no gaps or inconsistencies in the chain of sequences. The three authors then compared the narratives with each other and with the literature review. Finally, their analysis of the process of management innovation adoption (based on Table 2), which provides a theoretical framework that complements the liberated company literature, makes it possible to envisage several possible configurations of liberation practices.

The narratives were constructed for each case as follows. (1) We constructed multiple chronologies covering three dimensions: the statements (of senior management, managers, employees, and consultants), the significant events, and the management practices that were implemented. Two chronological templates, i.e., a formatting of the data independent of a theoretical framework, reflect these chronologies (cf. Appendix A). (2) We identified the critical or turning points that explained the transition from one sequence of events to the other. (3) We compared these sequences with the three phases of management innovation adoption.

At the end of these three stages, we first identified the practices that had been adopted during the same phase. We then grouped the practices into three bundles according to the aims pursued: making communication more fluid, supporting employees, and empowering employees. Once these bundles had been identified, it was possible to analyse the coherence between them.

Results

Our analysis gives two major results. Firstly, we find content coherence in the adoption of management practices in bundles. Secondly, we show temporal coherence in the adoption of these bundles.

Liberation as adoption of bundles of management practices: Content coherence

As mentioned here, the narrative sequences identified in the chronological templates (Appendix A) are compared with the three phases of the adoption process as described in the management innovation literature (see Table 5 for a summary of this comparative analysis).

The first thing we observe is that Lippi and Ecomobil adopt the management practices associated with liberated companies on different timelines (Table 5). The case of Lippi shows a fine distinction between the initiation/decision and implementation phases. Indeed, the respondents place the liberation between 2008 and 2012. However, we observe that this is highly dependent on previous changes. Analepsis, or pre-liberation period, analysis suggests that the emergence of a new management mode as such did not occur at Lippi until a later phase, under the cumulative effect of incremental changes or a ‘cumulative epiphany’ (Dumez, 2016, p. 128) related to the digitalisation and reorganisation of production according to lean principles starting in 2004. Specifically, the Short Interval Control (SIC) meetings inspired by Obeya rooms⁷ greatly contributed to the implementation of the rights to initiative, collective intelligence, and to make mistakes by encouraging everyone to regularly discuss everyday problems and actively participate in their resolution.

Similarly, while the respondents considered the management revolution at Lippi to have taken place primarily between 2008 and 2012, prolepsis, or post-liberation analysis, leads us to extend the liberation period until 2013. In fact, the process of overhauling the brand and its vision, in which the employees participated at the request of the company leadership, took place from 2011 to 2013. This clarification of the new collective identity came late in the liberation process. The end of the process was marked by the leadership’s decision to expand the product range, a goal that did not lead to new management practices that were significant within the liberation framework. Beginning in 2013, Lippi devoted more energy to renewing relationships with external stakeholders than it did to its internal organisation. Nevertheless, the appearance of a specific rhetoric such as ‘Lippitude’ to mean ‘sharing the company’s three values: high standards, engagement, and uniqueness’ (Bourguinat, 2019, p. 75, our translation), and the lack of disruption when the CEO, Julien Lippi, was away (March–October 2018), indicating that most employees had taken on liberation, are signs of continued use of liberated company practices.

In the Ecomobil case, the decision phase, which was clearly demarcated by the company’s adoption of holacracy, quickly gave way to the implementation phase. By adopting several liberation practices in one stroke, the company ran into difficulties in sustaining them. When it radically decentralised authority, the company was faced with inadequate coordination of tasks, which was exacerbated by the company’s growth. Just a few months after implementing holacracy, the company leaders decided to loosen its principles in the company’s workshop, where solidarity across jobs was weakened due to the lack of coordination:

Productivity took a dive in the month after holacracy was implemented. The transition was especially hard for the logistics, shipping, and fitting circles. They are at the end of the production line, and they took all these problems on the chin (an associate, informal interview, 27 October 2017).

To adapt, smaller working groups of three to five people were created using the model of mini factories set up for each of the main steps of furniture production (cutting, machining, sanding, assembly, painting, shipping, fitting). Each mini group had a designated coordinator from the workshop whose mission was to guide the team towards self-organisation. To help them in this task, the team members also had a coach from the office staff. The formal structure of holacratic meetings was also abandoned in favour of a quick weekly stand-up meeting next to a whiteboard in the workshop. Three years after holacracy was implemented and after several attempts to modify the organisational structure, the Ecomobil leadership chose to reinstate the role of managers, abandoning all references to holacracy. Field observations show that certain key holacratic practices have been maintained, for example, the work teams, or circles, are still self-managed, each circle maintains responsibility for organising its own work, and there are many new channels for sharing information. Reports from employees in the workshop division of the company, who had been working in a ‘defective’ holacracy, point to significant changes:

“With the workshop boss we had at the time, we had to go through him to do any little thing. But we’re more independent now compared to 10 years ago, when just one person controlled everything. So now, you don’t have any more ‘tinpot dictators’, so to speak, and the work comes out better” (employee, interview, 6 December 2018).

The Lippi and Ecomobil cases show that the process of liberation is the result of continuous experimentation and adjustments in liberation management practices to correct for organisational constraints. Outside of the differences observed between the two cases, we find that certain practices are adopted roughly at the same time, in the same phase of the process (see Table 5). Moreover, these practices combine in a coherent manner to lead to the same result: improving communication, supporting and empowering employees. Therefore, three bundles of practices with content coherence emerge from our analysis:

Bundle 1: creation of spaces for interaction and information transparency;

Bundle 2: personalised support and managers’ role as coaches;

Bundle 3: self-managed teams, flexible work organisation, participation in decisions, self-management.

However, there were some management practices that were less evident and were thus not allocated into bundles.

(1) Abolishing signs of power (individual offices, designated company car, hierarchical job titles). It seems to us that the signs of power had already been eliminated in both cases before the official initiation of liberation. While we know they were eliminated, it is difficult to know exactly when this occurred. In this respect, we could speak of this practice as a precondition for the adoption of other liberation practices.

(2) Integration of support functions. We note that neither company has integrated their support staff into operational teams, except in the case of recruitment.

(3) Sharing of created value also seems to be a practice that the leaders of both companies approve of, but it has not been clearly implemented at Lippi. The company was experiencing a difficult economic period during its liberation, which negatively affected its finances and thus any sharing of the (financial) value created. Moreover, it is possible that the data available to us do not allow us to observe this practice clearly.

Liberation as the adoption of bundles of management practices: Temporal coherence

The construction of the narratives of the Lippi and Ecomobil cases also shows a temporal coherence between certain management practices and bundles of practices. Our analysis shows that bundles 1 and 2 (smoother communication and employee support) constitute two pillars that are necessary for bundle 3 (empowerment) to be sustained.

At Lippi, the bundles were gradually implemented in the order described here, which enabled bundle 3 (empowerment) to continue as far as collective work on company strategy. Lippi based its liberation process on the initiation of the right to make mistakes and the adoption of bundle 1 (communication), made possible by a transition to lean production. This bundle was strengthened when the company was liberated, between 2008 and 2010. During this period, the company underwent digital transformation, which was seen internally as the beginning of liberation, especially in terms of the efforts made to train employees in digital technology (personalised support) and the spread of collaboration tools. This initiation phase was triggered by the 2008 financial crisis, which played the role of ‘major epiphany’ or a sudden change in the environment, according to Dumez (2016, p. 128). In fact, the steep drop in revenue and increase in the price of raw materials that followed was a major shock to the company’s leaders. Gradually, company stakeholders became aware of changes in expectations for the role of managers. During the first discussions between the consultant guiding the company’s digital transformation and the employees, the employees commented: ‘There aren’t any more bosses now; we’re all going to be bosses’ (Bourguinat, 2019, p. 51, our translation). At the same time, cuts to the number of middle management levels triggered some resistance among the managers: 80% of them quit the company within 2 years.

The timeline of practices adopted in the next phase of liberation (implementation phase) is less clear due to their more spontaneous and emergent nature. However, they show the gradual adoption of bundle 3 (empowerment) supported by bundle 2 (support), which appeared in the preceding phase (personalised support and coaching by management). The experimental initiatives launched by employees, e.g., the elimination of the vacation approval process, creation of a more inclusive recruitment committee, and co-optation of managers, are evidence of the beginnings of bundle 3 (empowerment). This bundle, which was initiated at the grassroots level, was increasingly gaining momentum on a voluntary basis (e.g., the vacation approval process still exists in certain teams) and marks the transition to the implementation of the liberated company. Moreover, bundle 2 (support) was strengthened during this phase due to: (1) the efforts to personalise training, thus building versatility and opportunities for lateral mobility (to date, 15% of employees change their jobs once a year); (2) the acceptance of the new facilitating role of managers, which also strengthened collective intelligence: ‘Now the bosses are animators in the strongest sense of the term, meaning they really breathe life into the team, give meaning to actions, and drive others’ (Frédéric Lippi in Bourguinat, 2019, p. 67, our translation).

Finally, the extensive work (over 2 years) of redefining the strategic vision and the brand identity, which all employees participated in at the request of management, largely contributed to the routinisation of liberated company practices, having strengthened the collective sense of belonging (‘Lippitude’).

By initiating the liberation process through holacracy, Ecomobil adopted bundles 1 and 3 (communication and empowerment) in one fell swoop and used two pre-existing management practices, the right to make mistakes and the sharing of created value, as a foundation for these bundles. However, employees quickly pointed out operational shortcomings, especially in terms of communication during the implementation phase:

Holacracy as we experienced it was very structured in terms of the routine team meetings to talk about problems. What we observed was that the problems that were brought up at those meetings potentially didn’t affect everyone at the meeting. So, it was inefficient for some people. And at the same time, all the people who were affected by the problem weren’t necessarily there. (Ecomobil employee, informal interview, 26 February 2019)

Moreover, the sudden implementation of bundle 3 (empowerment), i.e., before bundle 2 (support) was adopted, led to a gradual decline in empowerment practices in the company. The managers, whose titles had been eliminated during the launch of holacracy, gradually reappeared in the organisational chart under the title of ‘paired leaders’. They (again) became a key lever for the coordination of operational work and were responsible for their teams from the perspective of the company. In fact, the practice of self-management diminished and was no longer mentioned in organisational rhetoric. The same happened to participative decision-making (except during recruitment) despite the launch of an employee survey about company strategy. While the work groups kept some autonomy in how they carried out their operational tasks, the key decisions were discussed and led by managers:

Suddenly getting rid of the person who was in charge of moving production forward without providing alternative means so that teams could do it themselves, that didn’t work. And there was a drop into productivity, not because of the tool itself, but because there wasn’t any transition period or support (Ecomobil employee, informal interview, 26 February 2019)

To offset this effect, the company invested in developing support and communication practices, making it possible to support the remaining empowerment practices (routinisation phase). The number of spaces for interaction increased and escaped the confines of holacracy through employee initiatives. Personal development programmes were implemented, especially for managers. Several employees took specific training to become coaches, while others were coached with the objective of calling into question their relationship with authority or their management attitudes. An implicit recommendation for managers to become manager-coaches was thus gradually established. Managers became the main vectors for teams’ increased empowerment, on top of the coordination tasks they needed to perform. Finally, short-term working groups for all employees were regularly organised to, for example, promote nonviolent communication at work or announce strategic company events.

Discussion and conclusion

In this article, we have studied the process of adopting liberated company practices through the lens of the management innovation literature. Three lines of enquiry extend our results.

A process with content coherence through the adoption of management practices in three bundles

Three bundles of practices emerge from our analysis as having content coherence. We propose to classify them as follows:

(1) A communication bundle including the creation of spaces for interaction and information transparency. In liberated companies, informal spaces for interaction and rest periods are created along with the establishment of open-plan offices to promote communication (Colle et al., 2017; Ramboarison-Lalao & Gannouni, 2017). Information transparency is essential here, especially in terms of financial information (Ramboarison-Lalao & Gannouni, 2017).

(2) A support bundle brings together personalised support and managers’ role as coaches. In liberated companies, employees are trained and coached (Warrick et al., 2016) especially by managers, who need ‘to support their employees’ skill development’ (Gilbert et al., 2017, p.47, our translation).

(3) An empowerment bundle includes self-managed teams, flexible work organisation, participation in decision-making, and self-management. Employees are part of a collective, often broken down into self-organised teams or mini factories (Carney & Getz, 2009; Gilbert et al., 2017; Hamel & Breen, 2007). Liberated companies strive to be democratic through collaborative and participative decision-making (Battistelli, 2019; Hamel & Breen, 2007; Lee & Edmondson, 2017).

The identification of these bundles enhances the understanding of the liberated company, which in fact is not just a set of practices (Picard, 2015; Warrick et al., 2016) as presented in Table 1. Instead, it is a set of bundles of practices with content coherence, which makes it possible to better identify cases of liberated companies.

A process showing temporal coherence

We find temporal coherence in the adoption of the three bundles (see Figure 1) by using them as analytic categories or a ‘holistic’ framework⁸ (e.g., Armstrong, 2006) for thinking about liberation. The communication and support bundles sustain the empowerment bundle. We thus extend the work of Bernstein et al (2016, p. 44), who emphasises the importance of ‘transparency [that] enables cross-team integration’, and that of Fox and Pichault (2017), who highlights the role of management in coaching employees towards autonomy and empowerment.

Figure 1. Double coherence, content and temporal, of the adoption process for liberation management

We would add that while some practices remain separate, i.e., they could not be put into bundles because they did not show content coherence – the right to make mistakes, sharing of created value, and employee participation in strategic decision-making – they can still be included in this analysis of temporal coherence in the adoption process. In particular, it seems that only when the bundles have been consolidated can companies envisage participative strategic decision-making. This extends the liberation process hypothesised by Carney and Getz (2009), as formalised by Sferrazzo and Ruffini (2019). Indeed, while leadership sharing their vision of the company takes place at the beginning of the process, this later develops into a more emergent form through attempts at co-development. This shift requires that the empowerment bundle has already been implemented and accepted by employees. The two cases thus show that some practices or bundles of practices make up a precondition for implementing other practices or bundles of practices.⁹ We can see these as ‘enabling’ practices or bundles of practices in that they are complementary and promote the adoption of ‘action-oriented’ practices (cf. Figure 1): the enabling bundles (communication and support bundles) help employees to act by supporting their initiative (empowerment bundle). They thus seem to help sustain the adoption of liberation practices, which, as emphasised here, can notably be seen in employee participation in strategy. As for the three other separate practices – the right to make mistakes, abolition of signs of power, and sharing of created value – these also seem to be enabling practices, in this case as preconditions for the three bundles. Adopting these three practices before the adoption process seems advisable because employees may see it as a sign that leadership is making their liberation promises concrete. Therefore, they become a token of the credibility or sincerity of the leadership’s stated intentions.

Sustaining the adoption of liberated company practices: A necessary adjustment of the process

We have proposed a doubly coherent adoption process for liberated company practices (cf. Figure 1). However, this should not be understood as a fixed process. On the contrary, sustaining liberation seems to depend on ‘local arrangements’ like those mentioned by Rousseau and Ruffier (2017, p.114, our translation). This point is supported by the dissimilarities in the two cases. At Lippi, the lack of trial and error in the adoption process of management practices limited the risk of breakdown in empowerment. This approach allowed the adoption to be anticipated or to ‘hurry up slowly’ (Bourguinat, 2019, p. 95, our translation). At Ecomobil, the initiation of liberation through holacracy transformed the organisation more quickly, although this also led to more adjustments to management practices. This can be seen as counterintuitive since liberation management was adopted in this case with radical intentions or less tolerance for reversal. In the end, Ecomobil showed itself to be open to iteration in the adoption process with more frequent feedback loops than at Lippi, especially in terms of the role of managers. This rightly shows that there is not a unique or fixed model for the liberated company.

The process of adopting liberated company practices thus requires a continuous (re)adjustment to internal and external contexts, as seen in the side arrows in Figure 1, more in line with a spiralling process (Fox, 2020) that is endless by design. In the specific case of holacracy, which is understood to be a form of liberated company, a progressive approach seems less appropriate since it is a ‘plug and play’ solution that is codified, formalised, and more restrictive (Bernstein et al., 2016; Lee & Edmonson, 2017; Robertson, 2006). Our results show that without adjustments, holacracy is more likely to be rejected by an organisation’s members, increasing the risk that any attempts at liberation will be abandoned. By imposing the simultaneous adoption of bundles of liberated company management practices, holacracy threatens the temporal coherence of liberation. Thus, holacracy involves the organisation in a process that imposes a wholesale adoption without temporal coherence of liberated company practices, both enabling and action-oriented, from the beginning of the liberation process. This kind of situation can increase the risk of breakdown in the empowerment bundle since the enabling bundles of support and communication have not been implemented in advance and thus are not available to support its adoption.

Contributions of this research

This research makes several theoretical contributions. Firstly, the process approach enables us to better understand how liberated companies evolve over time through the adoption of management practices. We show that the adoption of the so-called liberated practices does not happen in isolation but follows a double coherence of content and time. It is thus important to take the whole process into consideration: the content of the earlier phases could become a factor that promotes the success of the following phases (Khosravi et al., 2019). The routinisation phase could be where latent tensions coalesce, especially when practices have been adopted inconsistently. The adoption process thus becomes strategic and should be carefully planned. However, given our results, routinisation seems to be continuous, which points to one of the limits of the process by phases or bracketing (Langley et al., 2013). In the case of liberated companies, routinisation does not lead to a stable or fixed state. On the contrary, like the rest of the process, it is made up of the constant local arrangements mentioned by Rousseau & Ruffier (2017) that allow new equilibria to be created. In other words, it is hard to have adoption without (re)adjustments. This could at least partially explain the difficulty in pinpointing the beginning of this phase and the impossibility of determining an end to the process as long as liberated company practices are in use in an organisation.

Secondly, this study contributes to the management innovation literature. It builds on existing research (Fox, 2020; Khosravi et al., 2019) to show the importance of going beyond linear processes in phases. While the phases made it possible to better identify the adoption of liberated company practices at first (with the help of Table 2), this linear process was then overtaken by the narratives, which highlighted the content and temporal coherence between the practices being studied. This shows the interest of shifting from a ‘weak’ process approach to a ‘strong’ one that is rare in the management innovation literature.

There are also management contributions from this study. Our results help managers to better understand the adoption of liberated company practices and its inherent difficulties. Adopting management practices in bundles (cf. Figure 1) argues for first implementing enabling practices or bundles of practices that will support employees’ increased autonomy and empowerment. We thus show the importance of adopting practices that reinforce each other. The strategic implementation of our results requires managers to act deliberately so that they can realise all the potential of the bundles of practices. Managers need to be actively engaged in the adoption of liberated practices by creating an environment that is conducive to employee empowerment. Without their full engagement, there is a risk that management practices that are initiated ‘wholesale’ at the beginning of the process, as at Ecomobil, will break down notably due to the discrepancy between rhetoric and reality, i.e., the practices that are adopted. Adopting management innovation ‘involves a choice by managers about how employees will be managed; a choice that ultimately influences the nature of the relationship between the organisation and its employees. For such a choice to be effective it must be put into operation through the development of […] policies and practices’ (Beer et al., 1984, p. 10).

Liberating a company is thus a continuous adjustment process with an undefined routinisation phase that requires constant attention from managers (Carney & Getz, 2009).

Limitations and avenues for future research

We have identified three limitations that could become avenues for future research. The first relates to our study of two SME cases. It would be interesting to carry out a study with a larger number of cases with different characteristics. A second limitation is in the definition of practices as an organisational phenomenon. Practice theory indicates that practices can also be seen as social phenomena. Practices support structure which, in turn, restricts action. In this respect, Giddens’s (1984) work on social structuration could be an interesting theoretical foundation for understanding how organisational structures enable and restrict actions in the case of liberated companies. This theoretical foundation would make it possible to enhance understanding of the adoption process for liberated company practices, especially for the routinisation phase. Indeed, Giddens (1984) shows how routinisation operates in response to the ontological security needs of the people involved. Thirdly, it would be relevant to examine whether the doubly coherent process of adopting liberated company practices that we propose here might increase operational and administrative efficiency and effectiveness and thus contribute to organisational performance (Birkinshaw et al., 2008; Damanpour, 2020). We could study the potential gains in terms of economic and social performance, the latter being very much under-researched in the management innovation literature in favour of the former (Walker et al., 2015). This coherent adoption process is likely to have a positive effect on the tensions, e.g., in terms of normative pressure, which have been highlighted elsewhere in the literature (Picard & Islam, 2020; Islam & Sferazzo, 2022).

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Appendix A

Narratives of the Lippi and Ecomobil cases (chronological templates)

Footnotes

^1. The name of this company has been changed.

^2. The description of the practices identified with a * is a contribution of this article.

^3. The generation of management innovation is the subject of a process that is distinct from the adoption we are focusing on. This is ‘a process for creating a new product, service, technology, or practice and results in an outcome that is new to at least a population of adopters’ (Damanpour, 2014, p. 1270).

^4. Holacracy, which has been widely associated in the literature with liberated companies, refers to a trademarked management system sold by the HolacracyOne company (e.g., Six Sigma for lean management). The empirical cases used to illustrate liberated companies and holacracy are often the same (e.g., Zappos).

^5. According to Weil and Dubey (2020), trial and error is even more random than experimentation in that it does not follow a pre-established model.

^6. The autonomy and responsibility in organisations (ARO) project was launched by the Futures of Industry and Work chair (FIT²) at Mines Paris – PSL in 2018. It aims to fill a gap in the empirical literature through in-depth comparative research on recent experiments with liberated companies, with a specific focus on the ‘how to’ to better understand the empowerment process, the scope of subsidiarity and limits of autonomy, as well as the difficulties they have encountered and how they overcame them or made adjustments accordingly. To enable a cross-sectional analysis, a framework with 5 sections and 37 headings was designed and applied to each case. For each organisation, at least 10 employees from different hierarchical levels were interviewed. The final report or monograph was then submitted to management for approval. The 10 or so case studies that have already been approved, including Lippi and Ecomobil, are available under a copyleft licence: https://www.cerna.minesparis.psl.eu/Recherche/Chaire-FIT-sup2/Activites/Plate-forme-des-cas-d-organisations-etudiees/.

^7. Obeya is a lean management practice that consists in using visual aids to ritualise short meetings.

^8. ‘The process of bundling HR strategies is an important aspect of the concept of strategic HRM. In a sense, strategic HRM is holistic; it is concerned with the organisation as a total entity and addresses what needs to be done across the organisation as a whole in order to enable it to achieve its corporate strategic objectives. It is not interested in isolated programmes and techniques, or in the ad hoc development of HR practices’ (Armstrong, 2006, p.57).

^9. We are not referring to preconditions for the adoption process for liberated company practices as such: the practices or bundles of practices seen as preconditions in our results could be adopted before or at the beginning of the adoption process.