It does help if you not only know most of your workers personally - but your father knows their father and so on for 200 generations!
There are a few software companies like that in Utah - everybody in the dept goes to the same church on sunday, not my cup of tea but they seem happy.
But it is efficient. It's like the system in Starbucks (there's a company that knows efficient) rather than the coffee shop where you have 6 people fighting over a single coffee machine and then the same six fighting over the till.