Chain of Command - Problems

Problems

However, people of such compatible views often have similar systemic biases because they are from the same culture. Such problems as groupthink or willingness to accept one standard of evidence internal to the group, but require drastically higher evidence from outside, are common.

In part to address these problems, much modern management science has focused on reducing reliance on command hierarchy especially for information flow, since the cost of communications is now low, and the cost of management mistakes is higher - especially under globalization - than at any point in the past. It is also easier to replace managers, so they have a personal interest in more distributed responsibility and perhaps more consensus decision making.

Ubiquitous command and control posits for military organizations, a generalisation from hierarchies to networks which allows for the use of hierarchies when they are appropriate, and non-hierarchical networks when they are inappropriate. This includes the notion of mission agreement, to support "edge in" as well as "top-down" flow of intent.