Paul, you should read some Stafford Beer - Brain of the Firm would be a good start. He replaces your sentiment:
"each person gets freedom of action in inverse proportion to the size of the entire tree"
With a theorem that states that the amount of freedom of each person is in principle a computable function of the purpose of the organization.
Beer describes how organizations could be run using a model called the Viable System Model, which he hypothesises is not only sufficient but also necessary.
Large organizations do in fact seem to inhibit freedom to their own detriment, but in Beer's view this is not an inevitable outcome of large organizations, it is simply a failure to properly design them.
Anyway, I highly recommend his stuff. Brain of the Firm describes his main theory, while Decision and Control is a fantastic voyage through his work in cybernetics in the 50s and 60s. It's all highly thought-provoking stuff. I tend to re-read his work every 3-4 years and always achieve new insight from it.
"each person gets freedom of action in inverse proportion to the size of the entire tree"
With a theorem that states that the amount of freedom of each person is in principle a computable function of the purpose of the organization.
Beer describes how organizations could be run using a model called the Viable System Model, which he hypothesises is not only sufficient but also necessary.
Large organizations do in fact seem to inhibit freedom to their own detriment, but in Beer's view this is not an inevitable outcome of large organizations, it is simply a failure to properly design them.
Anyway, I highly recommend his stuff. Brain of the Firm describes his main theory, while Decision and Control is a fantastic voyage through his work in cybernetics in the 50s and 60s. It's all highly thought-provoking stuff. I tend to re-read his work every 3-4 years and always achieve new insight from it.