“Management experts can do much harm simply by being doctrinaire when, because of some customarily accepted formula, they tear apart established ways of doing things even though the existing structure is producing satisfactory results. They evidence a form of professional conceit-not confined to them by any means-which contributes invariably to the bad opinion which many successful executives hold of the management expert. It is a serious thing to operate on a going concern, because an institution is made up of people with established ways of doing things; people who, in consequence, develop certain institutional attachments which are an important part of institutional success. They are like the traditions of a family. Men take pride in them.”

—  Marshall E. Dimock

Source: The Executive in Action, 1945, p. 79; as cited in Albert Lepawsky (1949), Administration, p. 406-7

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Marshall E. Dimock 15
American writer 1903–1991

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