Understanding How Power Distance Affects Agile Organizations

Agile methods offer flexibility, collaboration, and responsiveness to rapid changes, making them a popular choice for organizations seeking to adapt to the dynamic business landscape. However, the successful adoption of agile alternatives does not occur uniformly across all cultural and organizational contexts. In an organizational culture with high power distance, there is a clear hierarchy, and team members are less likely to question authority and expose problems, which can affect the adoption of relevant agile principles and practices, thereby potentially compromising the software quality. It is not always trivial to identify the latent behaviors associated with high power distance. Thus, managers may overlook the existence of high power distance and its effects, jeopardizing agile transformation initiatives. We conducted a systematic literature review to characterize power distance in agile organizations. Based on 15 studies, we identified 15 manifestations, 31 effects and 36 possible actions to minimize power distance. Most signs of power distance are associated with human factors such as Decision-Making, Empowerment, Autonomy, and Trust. Managers can use the identified manifestations and effects to diagnose the occurrence of high power distance. Likewise, they can use the identified treatments to define appropriate and contextualized treatment strategies in agile transformation initiatives.