Encourages employees to identify with the tasks they perform.
Consequently, employees have little sense of responsibility for the results produced when all positions interact. Furthermore, they resist change demanded by new market realities because “new” threatens current personal identity.
Encourages employees to “organize against the enemy.”
As employees identify with their tasks, they invite things to go wrong by blinding themselves to their actions’ consequences. When difficulties arise in the marketplace, it seems natural to blame someone else.
Rewards employees for “filling a position.”
Employees naturally want to protect the position they’re filling. Alliances designed for mutual protection emerge inviting creation or continuation of products and services that markets may not want or need.
Posits a mental model of adversarial relationships.
Employees assume they must fight for what is due them. They assume fighting well leads to respect and honor. They define achievement as winning the fight irrespective of market consequences.
Expects conformity.
Employees collude to leave their assumptions, beliefs and mental models unexamined, thereby discouraging new solutions to market problems.
Personnel Journal, April 1995, Vol. 74, No. 4, p. 80.