Management by Panacea: Accounting for Transience

ABSTRACT The cyclical nature of much consultant‐led activity designed to improve managerial effectiveness is explored through three consultant‐driven approaches to organizational improvement ‐ management by objectives, organization development and total quality management. Such packaged programmes seem to proceed through phases of high enthusiasm and much activity followed by a period of disillusionment, to be replaced by the next stage panacea. an attempt is made to offer some explanation of the transitory nature of much managerial activity which is believed to lie fundamentally in cultural and psychodynamic phenomena. Such an analysis may provide some clues to the search for remedial steps which might be taken to find more enduring ways to bring about increased managerial effectiveness in organizations, although by the very nature of our diagnosis we remain pessimistic.