I have no opinion on Zappos specifically. But I've seen lots of dysfunctional organizations doing a lot of stupid things that were profitable--until they weren't. Profitability is one indicator that a company is doing things mostly right (probably particularly in the case of something like a retail business that isn't highly differentiated). But it's not really evidence.

That logic does not follow. One could argue that Zappos could be making more money with a traditional org structure.

One could also argue that Zappos would be making less money with a traditional org structure.

Both would be baseless opinions. It's damn near impossible to compare like for like here.

I'd file the idea under "interesting", but I'm not going to be rushing to send Zappos my business card because there are creepy and inappropriate overtones - not least is the insistence that Work is Family[tm].

But... I think it would be definitely a good thing if more corps experimented like this, so that "business culture" actually meant something identifiable, and there was a lot more corporate diversity, with a much wider variety of management structures and personnel styles.

Then if you didn't like a culture, you could avoid a corp. It would be easy.

The problem now is that a lot of business culture is implied, and the rules - which are at least as strong as those used in holacracy - are unspoken. Sometimes they're deliberately misleading.

I don't think this particular solution has much hope of transcending office politics. But I still think it's a more interesting culture than anything offered by (say) HP, Oracle, or IBM.

Amazon works quite well but from whatever I hear their work environment is not much fun. A profitable company can be a bad workplace. At least for the lower ranks.

I don't know if one can really say that.

If you read / believe in Teal, profit making isn't the sole function of Teal organizations.