English: Lim, Griffiths, and Sambrook (2010) developed the Hierarchy-Community Phenotype Model of Organizational Structure borrowing from the concept of Phenotype from genetics. "A phenotype refers to the observable characteristics of an organism. It results from the expression of an organism’s genes and the influence of the environment. The expression of an organism’s genes is usually determined by pairs of alleles. Alleles are different forms of a gene. In our model, each employee’s formal, hierarchical participation and informal, community participation within the organization, as influenced by his or her environment, contributes to the overall observable characteristics (phenotype) of the organization. In other words, just as all the pair of alleles within the genetic material of an organism determines the physical characteristics of the organism, the combined expressions of all the employees’ formal hierarchical and informal community participation within an organization give rise to the organizational structure. Due to the vast potentially different combination of the employees’ formal hierarchical and informal community participation, each organization is therefore a unique phenotype along a spectrum between a pure hierarchy and a pure community (flat) organizational structure."

Lim, M., G. Griffiths, and S. Sambrook. (2010). Organizational structure for the twenty-first century. Presented at the annual meeting of INFORMS, Austin. Available at: https://communities-innovation.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Organizational-Structure-for-the-Twenty-first-Century-220619i.pdf (last accessed 23/06/19).