Large bureaucracies fail when distributed groups cannot pool critical information.

Evidence

Securing the benefits associated with transactive memory systems becomes more problematic, however, in large, complex bureaucracies, where information is necessarily distributed across multiple groups with diverse missions, histories, and priorities—as was the case with the intelligence communities processing 9/11-related data. In particular, the danger exists that critical information will be isolated or forgotten (i.e., proverbially speaking, the left hand will not know what the right hand is doing; even more seriously, the left hand may not realize what the right hand is not doing). As the 9/11 Report documented, this problem existed with respect to numerous pieces of critical evidence pertaining to the developing of 9/11 plots. The essential intelligence units were not transacting effectively. Instead, critical information was often “stovepiped” within agencies (p. 353). As a consequence, “analysis was not pooled” (p. 353). — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 1998

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the ongoing prejudice/intelligence thread and to transactive-memory concepts; the stovepiping failure mode parallels siloed knowledge bases and the ‘left hand not knowing what the right hand is not doing’ echoes organizational blindspots studied elsewhere.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 1998