The Liberated Firm: Proposal of Characterization Criteria
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.54695/or.v17i3.7885Keywords:
Liberated firm, liberation, leadership, empowerment, teal organization, holacracy, management 3.0, systematic literature review.Abstract
Academic research on Liberated Firms (LF) has been expanding steadily in recent years. Even though the concept is known to carry managerial and social innovations, it still sparks lively debates, both on the means of liberation and on the concept itself. Hundreds of companies have declared themselves
as liberated. Research is developing on this subject without reaching a consensus on its perimeter. The coexistence of related concepts (holacracy, teal organization, among others) accentuates the terminological vagueness. This lack of clarity requires delimiting the boundaries of LF and specifying
a theoretical framework around this concept. The purpose of this article is to characterize LF, refine its scope, and improve its actionability. To do so, we conduct a systematic literature review on LF since the origins of the concept in 1992 to 2021. Our results show 12 characteristics that enable
researchers and practitioners to distinguish LF from its related concepts.
