At regular intervals over the past two decades, management has been presented with various attractively packaged techniques, offered as the panaceas to cure hitherto perennial managerial problems. Although these “cure‐alls” may differ greatly (cf. MBO and productivity bargaining) they tend to have a common characteristic, that is, they claim that advantages will result for all the parties involved, and, often, that they will produce results in every organisation in which they are properly applied and given a chance to work. The experience that, in practice, some of the benefits claimed by the different groups involved are incompatible, or that some are more difficult to bring about than anticipated, or that the supposedly “universal” panacea “just does not work in our company”, does not seem to inhibit the discovery of new panaceas to replace or supplement the old.