Interesting story about chinese corporate culture(relayed by people at my work who sometimes cooperate closely with chinese): For almost all managerial positions, they hire two people for the same job and keep them in constant competition to try and get more/better work out of them. To keep the amount of people down in important meetings, they apparantly often divide it in two, the first part everyone is present and is essentially just a presentation of the issues. Then they'll go have lunch (or something), and only invite the people who had something useful to say during the first part of the meeting, and it's during this lunch the actual decisions will get made.
I know American companies love their hierarchies, european ones tend to be way flatter. I suspect that like the chinese, it might come down to cultural differences that make the optimal configuration different in different places.
In other words Chris might need a clear and somewhat rigid hierarchy to be at his best, whereas this would be counter productive in other places.
Also,
Chris Avellone Kotor2 was one of obsidian's finest hours imo.
