Self-managing organizations (SMOs) represent a radical form of less-hierarchical organizations, characterized by the complete decentralization of authority and the suppression of managerial roles. These organizations challenge traditional notions of leadership, offering an extreme context where leadership roles are distributed across members of the organization. While collective leadership has been already thoroughly explored in hierarchical context, SMOs present a unique opportunity to explore the limits and the conditions of collective leadership. This article addresses this gap by exploring how leadership roles are distributed within SMOs, the conditions that enable this distribution, and the resulting tensions and paradoxes. Through a comparative analysis of three case studies—Aepsilon, Greatsense, and HEA—this research highlights the diverse approaches to leadership distribution, influenced by organizational context, ideological foundations, and design modalities. Based on these findings, we propose a conceptual model of the “distributed leadership dispositive”, drawing on Foucault's notion of “dispositif”. This model articulates the interplay between human and non-human modalities (e.g., processes, artifacts, and cultural values) to provide a pragmatic tool for analyzing and facilitating leadership distribution in SMOs. By uncovering the mechanisms behind leadership distribution and its limitations, this study contributes to advancing the understanding of radical decentralization and offers actionable insights for practitioners aiming to implement self-managing models.
