аннотация к тексту Hard Sell Around

аннотация к тексту Hard Sell Around the Photocopier
Hard Sell around the Photocopier
Sociologists have long recognized давно признали that businesses of less than 200 individuals can operate through the free flow of information свободного потока информации among the members.
Once their size exceeds this figure, however, some kind of hierarchical structure or line management system is necessary to prevent необходимы для предотвращения total chaos resulting fr om failures of communication. Imposing structures of this kind has its costs: information can only flow along certain channels because only certain individuals contact each other regularly; moreover, the lack of personalized contacts means that individuals lack that sense of personal commitment that makes the world of small groups go round. Favours will only be done when there is a clear quid pro quo, an immediate return to the giver, rather than being a matter of communal obligation. Large organisations are less flexible.
One solution to this problem would, of course, be to structure large organisations into smaller units of a size that can act as a cohesive сплоченный group.
By allowing these groups to build reciprocal /rjИsjprYkYl/ взаимные alliances with each other, larger organisations can be built up. However, merely having groups of, say, 150 will never of itself be a panacea to the problems of the organisation. Something else is needed: the people involved must be able to build direct personal relationships. To allow free flow of information, they have to be able
to interact взаимодействовать  in a casual way. Maintaining too formal a structure of relationships inevitably inhibits неизбежно тормозят the way a system works. The importance of this was drawn to my attention a couple of years ago by a TV producer. The production unit for which she worked produced all the educational output for a particular TV station. Whether by chance or by design (случайно или умышленно), it so happened that there were almost exactly 150 people in the unit.
The whole process worked very smoothly as an organisation for many years until they were moved into purpose-built построенный для определенных целей accommodation. Then, for no apparent reason без всякой причины., everything started to fall apart  начали разваливаться. The work seemed to be more difficult to do, not to say less satisfying.
It was some time before they worked out what the problem was. It turned out that, when the architects were designing the new building, they decided that the coffee room wh ere everyone ate their sandwiches at lunch times was an unnecessary luxury and so dispensed with it (dispense with sth/sb обходиться без чего-либо/кого-либо). The logic seemed to be that if people were encouraged to so eat their sandwiches at their desks, then they were more likely to get on with their work and less likely to idle time away лентяйничать. And with that, they inadvertently неумышленно destroyed the intimate social networks that empowered the whole organisation. What had apparently been happening was that, as people gathered informally over their sandwiches in the coffee room, useful snippets of information фрагменты информации were casually being exchanged. Someone had a problem they could not solve, and began to discuss it over lunch with a friend from another section. The friend knew just the person to ask. Or someone overhearing the conversation would have a suggestion, or would go away and happen to bump into someone who knew the answer a day or so later; a quick phone call and the problem was resolved. Or a casual comment sparked an idea for a new programme.
It was these kinds of chance encounter встречаем in the coffee room, idle chatter болтавня (пустые разговоры) around the photocopier that made the difference between a successful organisation and a less successful one