What islands of power eventually lead to is a breakup of the integrity of the organization’s operating processes. As communications shut down, political warfare rages, and mission-essential energy is deflected, the gulf between and among the staff functions widens. This creates a vast area called white space, or spaces between the operating behaviors that are ignored or neglected. Non-responsibility and accountability for common items also create white space across the organization’s operating requirements.
A huge amount of organizational heat loss occurs when there is default in controlling or managing the resource, the problem, or the situation. In all organizations there exist common grounds used by all participants but assigned to no particular staff agency. What happens is that everyone uses the resource but doesn’t maintain the property. An ecologist, Garrett Hardin, first identified this concept. He defined what he called the Tragedy of the Commons to be “ . . . situations where two conditions are met.” He further explained the two conditions as follows:
[1] there exists a “commons,” a resource shared among a group of people,
[2] individual decision makers, free to dictate their own actions, achieve short-term gains from exploiting the resources but do not pay, and are often unaware of, the cost of that exploitation—except in the long run. For a simple explanation of the concept, think of a village that owns a pasture where all families could graze their flocks. When the pasture was overgrazed, who could be held accountable? These questions are always tried to be answered by the businessmen.