Rethinking the enterprise

Haier, how a hammer revolutionised business organisation

From Zhang Ruimin's hammer to the network of autonomous micro-enterprises, Haier has transformed traditional management into an entrepreneurial system driven by the market and individual autonomy

by Emiliano Pecis*

14 November 2025

4' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

4' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

In the autumn of 1984, Zhang Ruimin, a young manager called to save a refrigerator factory in Qingdao, gathered his workers together, laid seventy-six defective refrigerators on the ground and had them destroyed with a hammer. 'We can destroy the defective products ourselves, or the market will destroy us,' he said.

In that scene, which has entered the Chinese industrial myth, the idea of RenDanHeYi was born: connecting each person to the end user to create and share value. It is a vision that overturns Fordist logic, shifting the centre of gravity from internal control to a direct relationship with the market.

Today, Haier is a multinational company with a presence in more than 160 countries and, in Europe, also controls Candy, the historical Italian household appliances brand.

The chaos facilitator

Guiding us through this tale is Emanuele Quintarelli, sole director of Chaordian, a company that helps organisations transition towards post-hierarchical models. "Chaordian was born from the union of chaos and order," he explains, "because the task of companies today is to bring out islands of order on the edge of chaos.

In direct collaboration with Haier, Quintarelli is one of the leading Western interpreters of theRenDanHeYi model, applied in companies such as the ASA Group, Bosch Mobility, Intesa Sanpaolo and Gummy Industries, with the aim of making facilities more distributed and entrepreneurial.

From pyramid model to ecosystem of contracts

The metamorphosis that began with that hammer lasted for forty years. From a pyramid organisation, Haier has become a network of autonomous micro-companies, capable of working together directly to meet customers' needs. It is the philosophy of zero distance: cancelling the distance between those who produce and those who use.

The most innovative step came with EMCs (Ecosystem Micro-Communities), contracts between micro-companies that work together as equals to fulfil complex customer needs. The contract establishes roles, service levels and value distribution. Digital platforms, often based on blockchain, automate these agreements, transforming the organisation into a living network of collaboration and exchange.

In the RenDanHeYi, income is determined by the value generated for the customer, not by a boss or a hierarchical ladder: each person acts as their own 'CEO', choosing how and where to invest their talent and risk. The enterprise is no longer a machine that produces goods, but a network that produces economic relations and new entrepreneurial initiatives.

The market within the company

The strength of the model lies in its ability to replicate and adapt. Each micro-firm is an independent node, free to choose its strategy, people and conditions of participation, connecting to other nodes to seize market opportunities. The company stops being a closed structure and turns into a platform of micro-agreements that form and dissolve according to results.

"It brings the market inside the company," Quintarelli explains, "and overturns the logic of traditional management. It is no longer the boss who distributes work, but the customers who distribute value. When income depends on what you generate for them, motivation and speed of response change radically'.

Indeed, in this system, the boundary between employee and entrepreneur becomes blurred. When people share responsibility and economic benefits, the sense of ownership translates into speedy decision-making and widespread innovation: qualities that, in traditional models, require control and bureaucracy. When employees feel like entrepreneurs, the company gains trust, value and agility.

In the United States, where Haier acquired General Electric Appliances, the model has produced the brand's best results in a century. In China, the principle has extended to the entire supply chain, to the point of including partners and customers in the same contractual platform.

Conclusions: the hammer blow

For most companies, the enterprise is still the child of the Fordist model: a social machine built to produce efficiency, where decisions descend from above, obedience is the primary virtue and each individual remains a cog in an invisible assembly line.

Value is still born within the organisation and only eventually meets the market, far away and filtered by roles, budgets and controls. But this machine, while still impressive, struggles in the face of the complexity of the contemporary world.

The volatility, unpredictability, and uncertainty of the socio-political and economic framework, together with changing customer and market expectations, are cracking the wheels. The experiences mentioned above show how the company can not only cope with, but even take advantage of such challenges from an anti-fragile perspective, transforming command into contract, hierarchy into relationship, obedience into entrepreneurial initiative and employee involvement. Perhaps the real sign of our times is not technology, but the ability to rethink the pact that holds people, customers and organisations together.

So, if Ford had built the factory around the machine, Haier built the organisation around the human being. And perhaps that hammer of Zhang Ruimin, in the autumn of 1984, did not just destroy defective refrigerators: it broke the chains of the industrial twentieth century, paving the way for a century in which business is no longer commanded, but is self-governing, listening to the market, and giving people back the power to create value.

*AI & Organisational Strategist