To add to thenewgreen, People tend to forget that huge corporations are made up of a ton of individuals. Ideally those individuals come together to form a team, and the teams come together to form a branch and the branches come together to be the corporation. In reality it is way messier. I've been working with one of the biggest brands in the US and the amount of people, teams, approval, and overall lack of communication is stunning. Certain people know other people who might have the materials or answers you need. But if you are in communication with a team who doesn't know that person exists, you are basically screwed. Most recently, I got a trademark image (basically a low rez, black and white logo on a grid) in response to my request for a high rez logo with a transparent background. So whenever I see huge corps fucking up badly, I wonder who is really to blame. Is it that the corporation actively conspired to hide that information, or did the manager of x department downplay it a little to the manager of y department, who downplayed it a little to manager of z department, who decided it wasn't something that was absolutely necessary to take to the top rung. Or was it actually a bunch of high level guys sitting around a million dollar conference table trying to figure out how to not to screw up their image. And if they did do it, did these suits actually realize the severity or did they themselves underestimate it and then pass that underestimation onto the public. The guys in the middle, who actually know what is going on and the severity, can't do much about shit. They have jobs to keep, family's to feed, bosses to appease, and lives to live. They did their little part and no longer feel like it is their responsibility. With 8000 things going on in peoples individual lives, they can't sit at the dinner table focusing on whether it was handled correctly or not because at that point it's out of their hands. It surprises me that there are ever any whistle blowers at all sometimes. You have to have the miraculous combination of knowledge, empathy, courage and balls of steel to do something like that. The fear of repercussions and the self-doubt must be outweighed by the hard facts that you witness. Even then, humans have a remarkable way of downplaying or second guessing facts.
Having also worked for and with large companies, the amount of nonsense mistakes made on their behalf cannot usually be attributed to conscious decision making. More often than out, the outcome of a Corporate transaction is equal parts profit motive, self-interest on the part of the employees involved, and done at the barest minimum effort involved by those who would most likely be directly responsible for the request.
Edit: ronintetsuro, just read this C4SS post and thought you might enjoy it: http://hubski.com/pub?id=94700More often than out, the outcome of a Corporate transaction is equal parts profit motive, self-interest on the part of the employees involved, and done at the barest minimum effort involved by those who would most likely be directly responsible for the request.
Again, this is unfortunately the human condition. Most people do as little as is needed to get by and maintain their status quo. This is one of the reasons welfare is so cyclical.