> The Prisoner's dilemma is the reason. There might be a way of doing complex multi-participant tasks that is better than what's being done currently, but the incentives for each participant are not aligned. Even when that lack of alignment produces a suboptimal outcome, each participant in the process lacks skin in the game. Each participant in the process creating the suboptimal outcome is not accountable for the consequence of their collective action.

The article goes on to describe solutions without actually explaining how the Prisoner's Dilemma operates in large companies.

This makes the article less valuable than it could be because it interferes with the reader developing a mental model of the problem.

For a take on this that does present a very clear (and possibly actionable) mental model, see "The Gervais Principle":

https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...

The idea is based on the axiom that "organizations don’t suffer pathologies; they are intrinsically pathological constructs."