Test

Over the past few decades, business schools have embraced game theorists, economists, and others who deal in abstraction, all but stopping the solving of real-world, real-time problems. This text argues for a return to the medical model in business: listen, observe, and test. These three steps are the roots of human relations and organizational behavior; managers must fully assess a business and diagnose its problems before solving them. This model helped managers, consultants, and management scholars diagnose and solve problems faced by small and large organizations for decades, and it can continue to help companies today with myriad issues-including competition, leadership, diversity, and organizational structures-by offering a framework for addressing these problems rather than abstract theories. Chapter 4 focuses on human relations work done in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries by younger colleagues, including Kotter, Gabarro, and Hill, as well as Lorsch's research on white-collar workplace management problems. The evolution of the medical model is tracked across generations along with the usefulness of it. The medical model was used to better comprehend behavior of successful managers, the relationship between leadership and management, and the various skills and emotional resources needed for successful management transitions. The refinement of the medical model over the years allows for testing the findings of research that has grown out of the idea of "walking sticks" (i.e., real-world data gathering).

• Business management
• Business history
• Organizational transformation
• Organizational development
• Organizational behavior
• Managing yourself