Doctors, customers, and various internal departments disagreed about what criteria should determine the codes and how narrow the categories should be. Yet everyone had to use the same system. But in this case, there is no single correct answer. Rather, there are multiple, possibly inconsistent, competing answers, none of which has a unique claim to validity. Nobel laureate F.A. Hayek, one of the earliest economic theorists of the role of knowledge, would have recognized the problem.
Organizations overcome such difficulties through compromise and negotiation, or they break down.
In our enthusiasm for the power of information technology, we would be foolish to forget its limitations. Information may be cheap, but knowledge still isn't free.