How group hunting works in the open ocean

A team of behavioral ecologists from the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB) and the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (HU Berlin) is investigating how animals hunt in groups. Animals in water ...

For leaders, playing favorites can be a smart strategy

As anyone who's worked in an office, a factory, or any other workplace can attest, sometimes bosses play favorites. Whether it's assigning the most comfortable cubicles or the best parking spots, or deciding whose opinions ...

Guess who? Chimpanzee faces reveal family relationships

Researchers from the University of St Andrews have shown for the first time that not only do wild chimpanzees tend to look like their family members, but also some relationships are easier to detect than others.

The origins of human society are more complex than we thought

In many popular accounts of human prehistory, civilization emerged in a linear fashion. Our ancestors started as Paleolithic hunter-gatherers living in small, nomadic and egalitarian bands. Later, they discovered farming ...

Why the Dutch keep holding to the image of Black Pete

Analogous to Santa Klaus in the West, every December, the saint Sinterklaas brings gifts to the good children in the Netherlands. However, the latter is not assisted by a Christmas elf, but by what appears as a 'devilish' ...

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Hierarchy

A hierarchy (Greek: hierarchia (ἱεραρχία), from hierarches, "leader of sacred rites") is an arrangement of items (objects, names, values, categories, etc.) in which the items are represented as being "above," "below," or "at the same level as" one another. Abstractly, a hierarchy is simply an ordered set or an acyclic directed graph.

A hierarchy (sometimes abbreviated HR) can link entities either directly or indirectly, and either vertically or horizontally. The only direct links in a hierarchy, insofar as they are hierarchical, are to one's immediate superior or to one of one's subordinates, although a system that is largely hierarchical can also incorporate alternative hierarchies. Indirect hierarchical links can extend "vertically" upwards or downwards via multiple links in the same direction, following a path. All parts of the hierarchy which are not linked vertically to one another nevertheless can be "horizontally" linked through a path by traveling up the hierarchy to find a common direct or indirect superior, and then down again. This is akin to two co-workers or colleagues; each reports to a common superior, but they have the same relative amount of authority. Organizational forms exist that are both alternative and complimentary to hierarchy. Heterarchy (sometimes abbreviated HT) is one such form.

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