What is the Mehrlinien-Organisation (multi-line organization)?

An organization where employees report to several superiors at once — specialization at the management level, at the cost of unity of command.

* Mehrlinien-System — Taylor's functional foremen; each employee answers to several superiors. *

In the Mehrlinien-System (going back to F.W. Taylor's "functional foremen"), an employee receives instructions from multiple specialized supervisors, each authoritative for their own subject area.

Advantages:

• Direct, short paths to the relevant specialist boss
• Managers can specialize instead of judging everything
• Decisions by those with the deepest expertise

Disadvantages:

• Violates unity of command — conflicting instructions are built in
• Competence conflicts and unclear responsibility ("which boss wins?")
• High coordination effort

Tip: The matrix organization is the modern, systematized descendant of this idea — two formalized lines (functional + project/product) instead of many informal ones. Whenever you see "two bosses," think: who resolves conflicts, and is that resolution path defined?

Go deeper:

• Linienorganisation (Wikipedia DE) — Das Mehrliniensystem nach Taylors functional foremen und der Bruch der Einheit der Auftragserteilung.