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Buurtzorg: scaling up an organization with hundreds of self-managing teams but no middle managers

Frank Martela & Sharda S. Nandram

Journal of Organization Design2025https://doi.org/10.1007/s41469-024-00184-yarticle
AJG 2
Weight
0.48

What the paper says

In this contribution to the Organization Zoo series, we examine Buurtzorg, a highly successful Dutch home care organization with over 14 thousand employees that operates without any supervisors or middle management. Given its size, it is a rare example of a self-managing organization that has radically decentralized decision-making to empower autonomous teams to operate highly independently while growing to thousands of employees. Buurtzorg’s case sheds light on the role of supportive structures, including purpose-built information and communication technology and a small team of internal coaches, that the firm uses to scale up a self-managing organization of over 900 independent teams.

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https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1007/s41469-024-00184-y

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@article{frank2025,
  title        = {{Buurtzorg: scaling up an organization with hundreds of self-managing teams but no middle managers}},
  author       = {Frank Martela & Sharda S. Nandram},
  journal      = {Journal of Organization Design},
  year         = {2025},
  doi          = {https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1007/s41469-024-00184-y},
}

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Evidence weight

0.48

Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40

F · citation impact0.41 × 0.4 = 0.16
M · momentum0.63 × 0.15 = 0.09
V · venue signal0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03
R · text relevance †0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20

† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.