Steve writes:

<   What Marcus references as "gelling" and "need for social order" strikes
    me as superficial goals which are emergent properties, not sufficient
    pre-conditions.  My experience with overly formal organizations is that
    they tend to try to enforce those things, losing track of why they can
    be useful and how to make sure you obtain enough of them.  >

I suppose it is possible that people infer that consensus-building is expected 
of them and so they do it.   

My hypothesis was not that, rather that it is really baked into personality.   
My evidence is incomplete, but if you are at an organization with tenured 
people that aren't at any significant risk from demonstrating pushback, and 
they never pushback, it may be because 1) they are ambitious and think that 
their blind compliance will result in their escalation in the organization (in 
contrast to fear of punishment which is implausible), or 2) it is their 
preference to seek consensus even if there is no grounded basis for it or 
functional harm caused by is absence. 

Marcus

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