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: Command Hierarchy
Famous quotes containing the word features:
“It is a tribute to the peculiar horror of contemporary life that it makes the worst features of earlier times—the stupefaction of the masses, the obsessed and driven lives of the bourgeoisie—seem attractive by comparison.”
—Christopher Lasch (b. 1932)
“The features of our face are hardly more than gestures which force of habit made permanent. Nature, like the destruction of Pompeii, like the metamorphosis of a nymph into a tree, has arrested us in an accustomed movement.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)