Perhaps the two are even related. American companies will reach 3 9's of reliability for a device, call it sufficient, and ship a product. German companies will be engaged with not only internal stakeholders, but also various levels of government for weeks to months just to come to an agreement about what the acceptable threshold is (it's the highest asked for by the combined pool of stakeholders), and 18 months after the Americans hit the market, you'll have a wristwatch with 7 9's of reliability that costs 3x as much as the American one.
But fear not, its last disciples will die out soon.
By then we'll be fully digital, hold in check by Electrons bloated thrall, solely.
What a boon.
Schreibtischpingpong where you are the ball being table tennised from desk to desk :)
I never heard 'Büroflipper', which comes to mind when thinking about this. Being the ball in a pin ball machine.
Probably because it's too fast, compared to the latencies in real life. But that would apply to Schreibtischpingpong, too.
As a result, German bureaucracy tends to rely solely on paper and in-person appointments. With every state, every city, every office and every employee having their own interpretation of a procesd, you get an unpredictable, opaque, drawn out process that drives people mad.
There is a famous Asterix and Obelix scene about an office that drives people mad with bureaucracy. The protagonists are hunting for the Pass A38. This scene is better known in German than in its original French for a reason.