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What happens when a company has no bosses? A Danish firm tried it and here's what happened

2026-06-20 13:34:05Lifestyle SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX

What happens when a company has no bosses? A Danish firm tried it and

At a Danish company that runs the country's largest network of electric car chargers, the CEO made himself redundant. Today, more than 500 employees share responsibility for running the business.

Clever, the leading operator of electric vehicle charging stations in Denmark, has completely abandoned the traditional management hierarchy. There are no bosses, no middle managers and, from 2025, no job titles that contain the word.

From its headquarters in a former industrial area of ​​Copenhagen, the company operates through self-managed teams, where every employee participates in decision-making and is responsible for its implementation.

The architect of this experiment is co-founder Casper Kirketerp-Møller, who started the business more than a decade ago with a small staff.

Denmark and its Nordic neighbors have long been known for their culture of workplace equality and flatter structures, but Kirketerp-Møller wanted to take this idea even further.

"We could do it better than the traditional way," he told AFP, describing his interest in how people collaborate and the culture a company really needs.

Since 2019, Kirketerp-Møller has gradually started to remove layers of management, even eliminating his role as CEO. The main goal was to bring out the full potential of each employee, something he sees as increasingly important in an automated world.

"In the new era, where artificial intelligence will do everything related to efficiency, human skills and human business will be essential for companies to thrive and innovate in the future," he said.

There was also a practical reason. According to Kirketerp-Møller, organizations with multiple layers of management find it difficult to act quickly, because every decision has to go through a chain of approvals.

Helge Hvid, a professor at Roskilde University who studies self-managed companies, agrees that bureaucracy can paralyze decision-making when multiple managers have to give approval. He says flat models are particularly attractive to younger employees.

"People want to have a voice in their work, they want the work to have meaning. They want autonomy," Hvid told AFP.

Freedom with rules

Removing bosses does not mean abandoning the structure.

Clever's approximately 500 employees work in more than 50 teams of eight to twelve people, each organized around specific objectives, with clearly defined roles for tasks such as recruitment and human resources.

Kirketerp-Møller warns that freeing up the entire structure would immediately lead the company into chaos. This tension is also familiar to organization theorists.

Anne-Sophie Dubey, from the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers in France, notes that although flattening a company's structure aims to combat bureaucracy, a level of written rules remains useful, so that everyone understands how the system works.

For employees, the benefit is tangible.

Lykke Jeppesen, who has been helping colleagues reach joint decisions for more than four years, appreciates the lack of rivalry.

"I work in a team where we are equals. We are here to succeed together, so there is no internal competition between us," the 37-year-old told AFP.

According to her, this model fulfills basic human needs for autonomy, freedom, and a sense of belonging.

An internal audit in 2024 found that 92% of Clever employees were happy to go to work every morning.

Earlier this month, Kirketerp-Møller left the company permanently, but Danish energy distributor Andel, which has owned Clever since 2018, has pledged to leave the unusual structure intact. This suggests that the bossless experiment may outlive even the people who started it./ Euronews

 

 

 


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