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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32065 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 31, 2022

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The most efficient organizations are small businesses on their way to becoming large businesses.

Are they? Correct or not, "small businesses growing into large businesses" is a subset of small businesses, and a fairly small one at that.

The common feature of organizations that suck is that they dilute accountability, both for success and failure. Within a hierarchical organization, this is not the case.

Again, is this true? A lot of small businesses (where all the responsibility is on the owner-manager) suck quite badly despite concentrating accountability. Moreover, hierarchical organizations are great at diluting responsibility. This is true in both the public and private sector, though it is especially apparent the public sector. You can have a massive fuckup where everyone involved can - sincerely - say "I was just following instructions/official guidelines".

Subset of small businesses, that includes all large businesses.

The ones that suck do because their principal sucks. This does not say anything about the quality of the organizational structure.

hierarchical organizations are great at diluting responsibility...especially apparent the public sector.

I disagree. The public sector is the counterexample of hierarchy. If a superior can't fire his subordinates, it is not a hierarchical organization.

I disagree. The public sector is the counterexample of hierarchy. If a superior can't fire his subordinates, it is not a hierarchical organization.

I worked in the public sector for most of my career and I fired a good number of people. Again you are using far too wide a brush. The public sector of the whole world is far too broad a category for you to be making these statements which are then trivially disproved.

A large business is by definition not a small business.

The ones that suck do because their principal sucks. This does not say anything about the quality of the organizational structure.

What does this mean?

The public sector is the counterexample of hierarchy. If a superior can't fire his subordinates, it is not a hierarchical organization.

You're going to lay out what you mean by 'hierarchical' then, because it clearly has some disjunction from the common usage. In particular, the above would exclude militaries, which you previously praised.

Disobeying orders in the military is called insubordination. The penalty ranges from death (historically, maybe still in some places) to a court-martial. This is functionally the same as firing.

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