Kathmandu, June 28 -- Malcolm Gladwell, in his 2008 bestseller Outliers, provides a case study of Korean Air in the 80s and 90s. Korean Air, South Korea's largest airline, suffered a number of fatal crashes in those two decades, which Gladwell attributes not to technical issues or poor plane conditions but to the Korean culture of deference, where subordinates are afraid to question the decisions of their superiors. A hierarchical culture prevented crew members and copilots from questioning the faulty decisions of their captain, according to Gladwell.

Gladwell's assessment of Korean Air in those days perfectly encapsulates the current culture of work inside the Health Ministry, said a former senior official who is intimately familiar wit...