Somebody has to manage the company. Someone owns it, therefore someone has to be responsible for ensuring the company achieves its "mission", whether that be simple profit-making, betterment of a community, or whatever.
There is good management and there is bad management, but there has to be management.
The reason why most companies have a hierarchy is that it allows managers to delegate responsibility. The Romans understood this when they organised their armies.
A company needs good respectful communication between management and subordinates. "Workplace democracy" though is a bit of an unrealistic goal. Unlike a parliamentary democracy, you do not have elections. Rather, some people are paying other people to do a job. Now maybe some workers think it would be a good idea to have such elections and vote a bad manager out, but consider this: imagine you decide to renovate your house, and you employ a team of contractors to do the work. By and by, the workers decide they don't like you, or that they'd rather do the renovations in a way different from what you have specified. Should they be able to get together, vote you out, and do the work to someone else's directions? Call me naive, but I would say no.
Open Source software is somewhat different. It's not like a private company. People who supply software for it do so for their own benefit and for the benefit of other users. In many cases they do it without remuneration.
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