"In another part of the management forest, the mechanistic school was gathering its forces and preparing to outflank the forces of light. First came the numbers men — the linear programmers, the budget experts, and the financial analysts — with their PERT systems and cost-benefit analyses. From another world, unburdened by most of the scientific management ideology and untouched by the human relations school, they began to parcel things out and give some meaning to those truisms, "plan ahead" and "keep records." Armed with emerging systems concepts, they carried the "mechanistic" analogy to its fullest—and it was very productive. Their work still goes on, largely untroubled by organizational theory; the theory, it seems clear, will have to adjust to them, rather than the other way around."
January 1, 1970