How do less hierarchical organizations function?

For a long time organizations have been predominantly managerially-hierarchical in terms of organizing. During the last decades however, less hierarchical systems have started to emerge, for instance in self-managing organizations (SMOs) among others. This system is in an evolving process of development and remains conceptually underexplored. There are studies focusing on individual SMOs but only a few of them offer a wide and thorough review of their key areas and ways of functioning. The aim of this thesis is to explore the key precepts of functioning found across self-managing organizations in order to identify their base principles and shared features. The empirical part is based on qualitative research which is built on in-depth semi-structured interviews with representatives of Czech SMOs. The following analysis is based in an interpretative phenomenological framework and focuses on identifying shared features and trends in the ways of functioning of self-managing organizations. The analysis has shown that workers in SMOs hold greater amount of power than their counterparts in managerially-hierarchical organizations. Power in SMOs is not equally distributed, though. Work roles predominate over work positions in SMOs; workers have multiple roles and the responsibilities and allocation of work are closely connected to them. Organizational structures are unique. There are only few formalised pro-cesses but these are of great importance for the successful functioning of SMOs.