ABSTRACT
In the physical world, interaction without friction is nearly inconceivable. The essentiality of "organizational friction" is therefore more than a redefinition of the obvious need for internal mechanisms of control. Friction may be an antidote to the inertia of error; mechanisms for debate and for oversight of prospective decisions and important actions give an organization embarking on an incorrect or errant course the opportunity to review and to recover before major problems occur. The two ways of parsing errors fail to call attention to the central role of formal knowledge in organizations dealing with activities where anticipation, prediction, and modeling of equipment and behavior are central activities. Ironically, many of the adaptive strategies closely match the description of those aspects of industrial organization that Taylorism was specifically designed to combat, and that the neo-Taylorists are once again assaulting as wasteful and inefficient.
