Personal contact in firms primarily serves contingency adaptation through information exchange

Evidence

I interpret the stress on personal contact in a different way and as primarily to do with a pervasive problem in continuing economic relations: the need to adapt to contingency. Personal contact facilitates this by allowing for an easier exchange of information. You learn about the other person’s idiosyncracies and together you forge a special language which permits more sensitive interpretation. — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 2621

Categorization

• XREF: Adapting to contingency is exactly what collapsed when Saramago’s blindness removed shared information channels — the special language forged through contact is observability made communicative.