The integrated circuit manufacturer reinforced its culture of collaboration by adopting what it called a highly transparent operating system. The company’s managers credited its use of transparency for the success of its highly decentralized, profit center oriented organizational structure. In particular, the sharing of information among and between all units, no matter how small or how far down the organizational hierarchy, was seen as vital to ensuring the profit centers acted in a coordinated and cohesive manner. Since production sections – which were often the basis for determining profit centers – relied upon each other for their inputs and outputs, it was deemed essential that information relating to downstream sales orders, sales backlogs, product quality, and even production costs be freely available