Organizational Responsibility: Details ◾ 143
Need for Internal and External Porosity
The individual who has his or her hands on a specific task, and this may
include a production worker in a customer’s factory, knows more about
the needs of that task than anybody else. It is therefore important for that
person to be able to communicate with the supplier, preferably without the
need to go through “channels” (other than on an awareness basis) to do so.
Ford and Crowther (1922, 91) elaborate,
If a straw boss wants to say something to the general superinten-
dent, his message has to go through the sub-foreman, the foreman,
the department head, and all the assistant superintendents, before,
in the course of time, it reaches the general superinten ...