Financial Management in Holacratic and Decentralised Structures: A Conceptual Framework

Holacracy and similar decentralised organisational models are becoming more and more visible in the business environment, demonstrating that post-bureaucratic models are gradually displacing traditional approaches to financial management. The dissolution of hierarchies and authority transfers from centralised institutions to participatory forms of management is a model shift in governance approaches within organisations․ The model shift aims at transparency‚ flexibility and trust in decision-making processes. Therefore‚ this paper reviews developments in financial management with respect to decentralised‚ post-bureaucratic forms of organisation․ Drawing on a bibliometric analysis and systematic literature review of 25 relevant articles indexed in the Web of Science database, the paper identifies the core themes of the existing literature based on the topic. Findings reveal that decentralised organisations are likely to replace traditional budgetary control systems with more transparent and adaptive management processes, emphasising shared decision-making and accountability within the organisation. Compensation approaches increasingly rely on collaborative evaluation, while hierarchical practices are replaced by participatory mechanisms that balance autonomy with distributed responsibility. The research also reveals a significant research gap. Empirical studies examining the practical functioning of financial mechanisms remain limited. In addition, it provides insights into how post-bureaucratic type managers operate financial systems that are based on transparency‚ flexibility and trust‚ providing a conceptual basis for understanding financial management in decentralised and other non-hierarchical business organisations․ It finally recognises areas of future empirical work to explore these findings in detail․