Some companies – like Apple – become famous for their products. A few – like Virgin, Oracle or Ryanair – become famous for a flambuoyant CEO. But – despite decades of evidence linking HR and performance – very few companies become famous for their management practices.

We can probably list them on one hand: W.L. Gore, Semco, Southwest Airlines, Zappos and more recently HCL in India. Today, prompted by a recent HBR article by Gary Hamel, we might add a little-known food processing company Morning Star.

Morning Star has no managers, Hamel reports. Or, to be more exact, “everyone is a manager”. Work is agreed between colleagues via a ‘letter of understanding’. Leaders emerge from below rather than being appointed from above.

Why is this democratic form of management so rare? I suppose part of the answer lies in the reluctance of today’s leaders to give up power. I remember speaking with a group of CEOs and being surprised (perhaps naively) at their hostility to the idea of a self-managed team.

An email I received last week posed some deeper challenges to my idealism. In it, cross-cultural expert Fernando Lanzer offered a critique of Western democracy compared with the high power-distance of Chinese society. Who are we to say that low power-distance is better?

I have sympathy for this critique. Western democracy (and the way we like to recommend or impose it on others) is flawed. But – whether in political systems or management systems – I would argue that too many bad outcomes result from power in the hands of the few.