Chain of Command - Features

Features

Regardless of the degree of control or results achieved, and regardless of how the hierarchy is justified and rationalized, certain aspects of a command hierarchy tend to be similar:

  • rank - especially military rank - "who outranks whom" in the power structure
  • strict accountability - those who issue orders are responsible for the consequences, not those who carry them out
  • strict feedback rules - complaints go up the hierarchy to those with power to deal with them, not down to those who do not have that power
  • detailed rules for decision making - what criteria apply and when
  • standardized language and terminology
  • some ethics and key beliefs in common, usually enforced as early as recruiting and screening of recruits

Read more about this topic:  Chain Of Command

Famous quotes containing the word features:

    However much we may differ in the choice of the measures which should guide the administration of the government, there can be but little doubt in the minds of those who are really friendly to the republican features of our system that one of its most important securities consists in the separation of the legislative and executive powers at the same time that each is acknowledged to be supreme, in the will of the people constitutionally expressed.
    Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)

    Each reader discovers for himself that, with respect to the simpler features of nature, succeeding poets have done little else than copy his similes.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    “It looks as if
    Some pallid thing had squashed its features flat
    And its eyes shut with overeagerness
    To see what people found so interesting
    In one another, and had gone to sleep
    Of its own stupid lack of understanding,
    Or broken its white neck of mushroom stuff
    Short off, and died against the windowpane.”
    Robert Frost (1874–1963)