Holacracy and Project Management: Are Flat Organizations the New Normal for Project Managers?

This study investigates how project management practices are redefined within organizations adopting Holacratic governance, a model that institutionalizes agility through distributed authority and dynamic role structures. Despite Holacracy’s conceptual alignment with Agile principles, empirical research on its implications for project management remains scarce. To address this gap, a multi-organizational qualitative inquiry was conducted, encompassing nine semi-structured interviews across six organizations in the United States and Europe that had either implemented or facilitated Holacracy. The research explores how project coordination, decision-making, and accountability evolve in the absence of traditional managerial hierarchies. The findings reveal that Holacracy does not replace Agile methodologies but rather extends them by embedding iterative learning, transparency, and adaptive coordination into the organization’s governance architecture. Project management shifts from a command-and-control logic to distributed governance, where authority is anchored in clearly defined roles and peer-based accountability. Hybrid arrangements emerge as adaptive responses to sectoral and regulatory contingencies. The analysis highlights both the strengths of distributed decision-making, such as enhanced responsiveness and stakeholder engagement, and its vulnerabilities, including role ambiguity and coordination complexity.