Data Exploration: Hierarchical vs Categorical Grouping

Hierarchical:

well defined parent-child relationship,  can be many to many. An engineer can belong to a department, can be have one/more supervisor.
Exploration: show as a tree structure, filter by single selection with KEEP ONLY logic.

Project manager
       |_Lead Software engineer
             |_Software Developer

What is a child has multiple parent? For example: manager, location, and department? Show all three trees and make the child appear in all of them? Item may appear in different levels in different trees.

Department tree: A works in Mobile department.
Manager tree: A works under manager B.
Location tree: A works in 4th floor.

Hierarchical clustering.

Categorical:

no well defined parent child relationship, segmented category.

    Engineer - mobile team
    Engineer - web team
    Designer - desktop team
    System architect - web team
    Designer - mobile team

Show as a list, filter by check boxes, allow multiple selection for filtering with OR logic.

Similarity based clustering.  Similarity is the category. Can belong to multiple groups. Is there any assumed hierarchy here? Or we can just have two dimensions, Department and Job role.

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