It’s not just gummint. ANY sufficiently mature organization runs on word-of-mouth institutional knowledge of whose monitor has the sticky notes with the magic incantation to unlock the next obstacle. What’s more, the substance of what an institution does (as opposed to what it professes) is encoded in the interstitial spaces of those procedures. Staff loyalty is to that system and those procedures because that is the basis on which they are hired, fired, promoted, demoted and paid. It is adherence to procedures that is measured and manage. The system resists change and replacement in equal measure because the principles on which is operates are only partially understood. Means come to have only a tenuous connection to ends, which inevitably become an exogenous variable. So, not only the system is a black box but so is the external world that it is supposed to affect.
It’s not just gummint. ANY sufficiently mature organization runs on word-of-mouth institutional knowledge of whose monitor has the sticky notes with the magic incantation to unlock the next obstacle. What’s more, the substance of what an institution does (as opposed to what it professes) is encoded in the interstitial spaces of those procedures. Staff loyalty is to that system and those procedures because that is the basis on which they are hired, fired, promoted, demoted and paid. It is adherence to procedures that is measured and manage. The system resists change and replacement in equal measure because the principles on which is operates are only partially understood. Means come to have only a tenuous connection to ends, which inevitably become an exogenous variable. So, not only the system is a black box but so is the external world that it is supposed to affect.