The chain of command of an organization is the hierarchy of authority for that organization.

All organizations—even those that don’t know it—have an overarching structure that dictates the reporting relationships between different employees.

In many cases, individual reporting relationships depend on where employees are placed on an organizational chart. Employees will generally report directly to those who are listed above them on the org chart, and the most popular, tried-and-tested way of building these reporting relationships is through a corporate chain of command, also known as the “hierarchical structure”.

A chain of command is an organizational system where instructions are passed from one person to another. It’s widely used in military and other disciplined organizations (e.g., police departments) in addition to civil organizations.

In civil organizations, a chain of command tells employees who they should report to and when they should consult their supervisor or another manager for things like project decisions and passing information.

How Does a Chain of Command Work?

In a traditional chain of command, one person sits at the very top. In an organization, this is usually the Chairman or Chief Executive Officer (CEO). Below this person on the second line, you’ll typically find other C-level positions (i.e., CFO, COO, CDO) who are the CEO’s directly reporting staff members.

Moving further down the chain, you’ll typically find regional managers, department heads, mid-level managers, team leaders, supervisors, and, at the very bottom, regular staff members.

At each level of the chain of command as you move downwards, autonomy and decision-making power is diminished. This hierarchical method for organizing power, authority, decision making, communication, and information flow assumes that each level of the organization is directly subordinate to the one above it, i.e., the level to which it reports.

In larger companies, the chain of command is often split into many levels across three distinct tiers: senior management (e.g., CEO, Director, Senior Vice President), mid-level management (Regional Manager, Department Heads, Supervisor), and regular employees who don’t manage other employees.

5 Advantages of an Organizational Chain of Command

Here are five key advantages of an organizational chain of command:

1. It’s Highly Efficient

The chain of command tells employees who they should report to and when they should consult their supervisors with key information like project decisions. It also tells employees where they fit within the organization and what their remits are.

This clarity is essential for creating an efficient work environment where people can carry out their roles without fear of overstepping the mark or acting out of turn. And unlike in a matrix organization, the linear reporting structure where employees report to a single supervisor or manager makes it easier for employees to seek help and advice when they need it before making a decision.

2. It Supports All Employees

Every employee within an organization, regardless of where they sit on the organizational chart, is at a different point in their career with their unique levels of experience. However, those lower down often need more support as they develop within their roles.

A chain of command supports employees with less experience and tenure because it shows them where they fit in and who they can turn to for assistance. This enables a general feeling of confidence and empowerment among lower-level employees, which in turn leads to a greater potential for growth and development.  

3. It Simplifies Delegation

Delegating authority is a lot easier when there’s a chain of command in place because it clearly tells employees who to give their orders to and who to take their orders from. In this way, it becomes possible for senior managers to delegate tasks and responsibilities to a subordinate where necessary.

For example, a senior manager may have to skip a meeting due to an unforeseen schedule clash. Instead, the manager can delegate a subordinate to attend on their behalf, helping to ensure continuity of projects and the organization itself.

4. It Creates Accountability & Clarity

In a chain of command, responsibility and accountability are clearly assigned; each manager has their own ultimate oversight and responsibility for a group of employees performing a specific function.

This not only means that employees are not confused about whom to approach for things like resources, feedback, and assistance, but decision making is given a lot more careful thought and scrutiny because managers have their own skin in the game.

5. It Standardizes Communication

In an organizational chain of command, there are usually more standardized methods of communication, which create a more formal internal environment.

This creates a form of “discipline” within the organization when it comes to communication, with orders, instructions, and information flowing down or up a clearly defined pathway: higher-ups pass their orders down the chain and employees pass information up it.

& 3 Challenges

The organizational chain of command does come with its own set of unique challenges, however. These include:

1. A Disconnect Between the Top & Bottom

In an organizational chain of command, the decision-making power is heavily concentrated at the top and begins to dwindle as you move further down.

This means that there’s an inherent disconnect between the top & bottom of the chain because the people making all the important decisions are not necessarily aware of the realities and problems faced by those working at a lower level. Teams may be tasked with unrealistic goals and face other problems like insufficient budgets as a result.

2. It’s Not Always Efficient

While the chain of command is efficient in many ways, it’s inefficient in others. Most notably, the chain of command slows down the decision-making process because of the long hierarchical chain along which information and instructions must pass.

A decision that could be made by a lower-level employee relatively quickly—e.g., expensing a train ticket—will find itself slowed down by the bureaucratic nature of the chain of command because permission for the decision must be requested up the chain and then approved back down it.

3. It Doesn’t Always Fit the Modern Organization

The chain of command is generally representative of a time when the world of work was far more mechanical and habitual with less information communication. Today, organizations are more agile and liberal, jobs are less rigidly defined, and organizations are beginning to promote employee empowerment and autonomy.

The means that the modern organization clearly doesn’t mesh as well with the chain of command as it once did, and we’re starting to see more and more organizations use alternative structures like the matrix or flat organizational structure as a result.

Build Your Own Chain of Command

Despite these challenges, it’s still possible to make a chain of command work for any organization when you build one that focuses on supporting employees at all levels rather than strictly govern them. This helps to build a strong culture where it’s easy to communicate and information flows freely.

As with anything, building the right chain of command for your organization is a matter of experimenting until you have something that works for your organization. Think carefully about the roles that equipped to guide other members of the team and be careful not to overload the chain with too many layers.

Looking for a tool to build your chain of command with? Check out our organisational chart builder which can be used to map out your own chain of command hierarchy.

Are you interested in knowing more about the chain of command at your workplace? "Chain of command" describes the way in which organizations, including the military, religious institutions, corporations, government entities, and universities, traditionally structure their reporting relationships.

Reporting relationships refers to an organizational structure in which every employee is placed somewhere on an organizational chart. The employees report to the employee who is listed above them on the organizational chart.

When every employee reports to one other employee, decisions and communication are tightly controlled and they flow down the chain of command throughout the organization. This is an intentional, traditional structure for the chain of command in organizations that want to tightly control the dissemination of information and the allocation of power and control. Historically, this was the preferred structure for an organization.

In the traditional chain of command, if you look at relationships pictorially presented on an organizational chart, the president or CEO is the top employee in the chain of command. This person's directly reporting staff members would occupy the second line of the chart, and so forth down through the reporting relationships in an organization.

At each level of the organization moving down the chain of command, the power to make meaningful decisions is diminished. This hierarchical method for organizing information flow, decision making, power, and authority, assumes that each level of the organization is subordinate to the level to which it reports.

Terminology like a "subordinate" to refer to reporting employees and "superior" to refer to employees others report to, such as managers, is part of traditional hierarchical language and thinking. These terms are increasingly not being used as much, as a move to more egalitarian workplaces is the norm. Undoubtedly, the current focus in organizations on diversity and, especially, inclusion, will accelerate this trend.

Command and control are intrinsic in the chain of command within organizations. The further up the chain of command your job is located, the more power, authority, and usually responsibility and accountability you have. Larger organizations are more prone to using this model

Traditional hierarchical structures have plus.es and minuses about how they work in organizations.

• Clear reporting relationships exist with employees designated who are responsible for communicating information, providing direction, and delegating authority and responsibility.
• Each employee has one boss, thus alleviating the problem of multiple masters and conflicting direction in the chain of command, such as in a matrix organization, where employees can report to multiple bosses.
• Responsibility and accountability are clearly assigned and each manager has oversight responsibility for a group of employees performing a function.
• Employees are not confused about whom to go to for resources, assistance, and feedback.
• A certain simplicity and security exist when you organize people and relationships in a structured, unbending, controlled hierarchical cascade.

• Chain of command communicates to customers and vendors which employee who is responsible for what decisions in their interaction. Job titles that define each level of the organization further communicate authority and responsibility to organizational stakeholders and outsiders. For example, external stakeholders know how much power the title of vice president conveys.

• Chain of command thinking originated in an industrial age when work involved more rote activities, less information, and communication options were limited, Decision making and authority were clearly placed in the hands of a few individuals at or near the top of an organization chart. 
• Today's organizations experience a plethora of communication options, more intellectually challenging and information-based jobs, and the need for faster decision making. The chain of command, in many ways, impedes these new organizational options and needs.
• When information is available everywhere, a hierarchical order that ensures the communication of decisions and information needed by various levels of employees is unnecessary to the dissemination of information.
• The need for flexibility and faster decisions in an agile work environment requires that employees communicate directly with all levels of the organization. Waiting several days for the boss to be available is not acceptable if a customer's need goes unserved or an employee's work is slowed down. The employee should be able to talk with his or her boss's boss or the president or make the decision on their own.

• If the desire is to develop employees who can immediately respond to a customer need, because customers require immediacy in this fast-paced world, employees must be able to get information immediately and make decisions without oversight to meet customer needs in a timely manner.

• Jobs are no longer rigidly defined and the current expectation promotes employee empowerment, autonomy, and decision-making authority closest to where the need for the decision exists.

The hierarchical order may still exist for ease of organization and reporting relationships, as laid out in a chain of command on an organizational chart. But, the lines and the former rigidity are now blurred.

In the past, if an employee circumvented his or her boss in favor of talking with the boss's boss, the employee received clear communication that the chain of command was in place for a purpose.

While organizations still retain some of its vestiges, the chain of command is much more difficult to enforce when information is so freely circulating and communication is so easy with any member of the organization.

The span of control of an individual manager has also become broader, with more reporting employees than in the past. This makes the enforcement of the chain of command more difficult.

This change forces the manager to allow more autonomy. Technology has blurred the hierarchy further since information is available all of the time to any employee. Many organizations are experiencing the value of decentralized decision making.

Within the concept of the chain of command, position power still plays a role in organizations. It's a by-product of the traditional hierarchical organization. For example, a quality department supervisor at a small manufacturing company asked to become the quality director in her company. Her stated reason for the change in title was that, if she was a director, people would have to listen to her and do what she wants.

This is a young supervisor, who is still learning how to accomplish work through other people, but her perception that a bigger title would solve her problems was an example of the traditional chain of command thinking.

In another example, a new employee was asked to send out a note with a question and a deadline to the director and VP-level managers in her organization. The request sparked an hour of work over a simple note because it was going to "the biggest, most important people in the company."

Modern management science is exploring other options for organization and customer service delivery in this brave new world. Team-based structures are replacing the traditional hierarchical approach to organizational structure and management. The span of control is increasing so managers have more reporting employees thus decreasing their ability to micromanage decision processes.

The future holds out hope for innovative organizational structures that better serve the needs of employees, organizations, and the marketplace. The rise in popularity of telework and the ongoing trend to employ remote employees and enable worker flexibility, a specific desire for millennial employees (and Gen Z), further escalates the need for better management structures. After all, these employees are doing work that you cannot see them doing.

But hierarchical thinking, a chain of command, and attributing power to position and titles all still exist—despite the increasing evidence that they are less functional in today's workplaces.