Calling Out and Calling Off the Dogs: Managerial Diagnosis in Public Service Organizations

Decision-makers spend their professional lives identifying situations that merit action. Nutt defines this process of placing problems in action or deferred categories as "managerial diagnosis." It is felt that this is a critical aspect of managerial action because it rests on assumptions that need to be considered in project planning and evaluation. To facilitate future studies of the effectiveness of managerial behavior, a framework of fourteen propositions which describe the process of managerial diagnosis is presented. The author says that: 1) the manager will defer those perceptions where performance exceeds expectations; 2) decision-makers are goaded into evaluation (a process used to measure performance or comparative alternatives) by stimuli such as conflict, uncertain performance, and uncertain expectations; and 3) evaluation findings are deemed acceptable only when they reduce conflict.