The academic disputes between the “humanistic” and the “mechanistic” schools of management theory are essentially sterile because they both focus primarily on the arrangement of activities within an organization. They tend to move rather casually over the fundamental fact that any organization exists—or should be permitted to exist—only in order to produce an incremental social or economic value. The effectiveness with which that end is achieved through the skillful application of accessible resources must be the final measure of management performance. But this criterion demands a high facility in relating causes and effects, which is a rational process. There is no way to master it except to think.