This is perhaps an example of the hazard of metaphor: it can encourage inaccurate or even misleading analogic reasoning. The theme of technical debt is intertwined with organizational issues. Accounting for tech debt is not done at an organizational level, it's done on a team or individual level. The organization has little idea of how much technical debt it 'carries' in its code and paying tech debt is notoriously difficult to make visible to those setting business level priorities. There is an expectation that technical debt will be managed locally, with individuals and teams devoting just enough effort to keep the debt low while still keeping the velocity of development high. Critically, technical debt is, by definition, appreciated prior to its creation, visible in code, and can be eliminated by refactoring.

the “paperwork reduction act” required any government office to check with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in the White House every time they wanted to put out a form, to ensure the form was not duplicative of any other existing form. This measure aimed at “reducing paperwork” from the government, has indeed accomplished its goal, but by making it impossibly slow for any government office to put out any form or survey. This hurts everything from website user surveys to USGS surveys of opinions around public lands.

. Organisational commitment was measured by the nine-item version of Porter's organisational commitment scale (Porter et al., 1974; Mowday et al., 1979). This scale was used because of its reliability and validity (Mowday et al., 1979), and its widespread use and acceptance (Morris et al., 1993). A five-point Likert scale was used and individual scores were calculated by averaging the responses to the items (α = 0.86).

The company had been owned by members of the same family for more than a century and their management style was characterized by benevolent paternalism. However, with increased market competition, declining profits, lost export contracts and redundancy, the company’s owners decided to distance Beverage Co from its informal industrial relations history. In its place they introduced a more strategic form of human resource management, which included several employee participation (EP) schemes.

A similar team structure exists at the head office, with clerical workers engaged in administration, sales and marketing. However, there is no union recognition for these employees and despite several requests from the GMB union; management has decided to keep this side of the business non-unionized.