The key question for top management is what are your assumptions (implicit as well as explicit) about the most effective way to manage people? - Douglas McGregor

The effectiveness of authority as a means of control depends first of all upon the ability to enforce it through the use of punishment. In the two organizations which have been the models for classical organization theory, the situation with respect to enforcement is clear. In the military, authority is enforceable through the court-martial, with the death penalty as the extreme form of punishment. In the Church, excommunication represents the psychological equivalent of the death penalty.

Classical organization theory suffers from "ethnocentrism": It ignores the significance of the political, social, and economic milieu in shaping organizations and influencing managerial practice.

The essential task of management is to arrange organizational conditions and methods of operations so that people can achieve their own goals best by directing their own efforts toward organizational objectives.