That is how large INCOMPETENT organizations are run. And yes, large organizations have a trend towards incompetency.
Walk into a meeting, look around. Add up everyone's per hour salary. That is what having that meeting costs. Now look around and consider what each talking about the relevant bits to everyone else would take until a decision was made without the meeting. That's potentially how much more not having the meeting costs.
You'll conclude two things. Meetings are crazy expensive for the organization. Meetings can be worth it when the alternative is even more crazy expensive. But the meeting should be as efficient as possible. And you want people to only be in them when there is positive value from doing so.
I just ran a standup. I do this every day. 8 people for 15 minutes. Let's suppose their average salary is $50/hour. That's a $200 meeting. I spend another 30 minutes per day summarizing it, making notes available, and elsewhere keeping a status page up to date so that other people don't have to ask about that meeting.
That extra work keeps another 5 people from showing up. That keeps me from having to have another set of meetings with those people. That keeps the meeting from ballooning to 30 or 45 minutes per day.
In a good organization you want everyone thinking about meetings like I just did. Yes, lots of meetings are needed. Yes, important people will spend most of their time in meetings. But make it efficient. And eliminate any meeting, and any person from any meeting, that doesn't pull its weight.
I don't see how your point is anything against a 'corporate structure' with multiple layers of heirarchy. You are just describing how to run a good one.
My point is against justifying having more meetings and deeper hierarchies over time on the basis of, "Oh well, that's how large organizations should be run."
Organizations should be run with the necessary minimum of meetings, hierarchy and administration. Universities have entirely lost sight of that. And our response should not be a complacent excuse that this is how it should be for any organization of that size. Our response should be to call them out on being severely incompetently run, with no excuse other than the self-aggrandizement of useless bureaucrats.
Walk into a meeting, look around. Add up everyone's per hour salary. That is what having that meeting costs. Now look around and consider what each talking about the relevant bits to everyone else would take until a decision was made without the meeting. That's potentially how much more not having the meeting costs.
You'll conclude two things. Meetings are crazy expensive for the organization. Meetings can be worth it when the alternative is even more crazy expensive. But the meeting should be as efficient as possible. And you want people to only be in them when there is positive value from doing so.
I just ran a standup. I do this every day. 8 people for 15 minutes. Let's suppose their average salary is $50/hour. That's a $200 meeting. I spend another 30 minutes per day summarizing it, making notes available, and elsewhere keeping a status page up to date so that other people don't have to ask about that meeting.
That extra work keeps another 5 people from showing up. That keeps me from having to have another set of meetings with those people. That keeps the meeting from ballooning to 30 or 45 minutes per day.
In a good organization you want everyone thinking about meetings like I just did. Yes, lots of meetings are needed. Yes, important people will spend most of their time in meetings. But make it efficient. And eliminate any meeting, and any person from any meeting, that doesn't pull its weight.