Unfortunately, this sort of ignores that many academic departments are often crippled by overwhelming internal politics, and they rarely scale beyond a few dozen people at most. Moreover, many academicians within a department often work on completely separate projects requiring little or no coordination of any kind. This is dramatically different from what is encountered in many commercial organizations and companies.
My experience is that flat structures in large commercial enterprises usually reproduce stratified structures embedded within them, and they actually enhance the degree of stratification by obscuring who makes decisions and creating unassailable cliques.
My experience is that flat structures in large commercial enterprises usually reproduce stratified structures embedded within them, and they actually enhance the degree of stratification by obscuring who makes decisions and creating unassailable cliques.