Here, action at each level is important. Grassroot decisions can lead to national and international policies. Networks are clustered and multi-leveled. In this respect, they are like social hierarchies. Level structure is critical to understanding the potential of networks of the future, as flexible forms of complex organizations.
Networks are lumpy.
It is the second meaning of hierarchy, the exclusively superior and subordinate relationships, that marks the profound difference between traditional hierarchy and networks. This is not only for the relations between members of a network, but in the structural relations between the members as parts and the network as a whole. Members and networks, parts and wholes, are complements. In networks, individual and group are yin and yang. The individual is not subordinated to the group.