Limits of Scientific Management

What distinguishes this analysis from the more common type of forecasting and staff reporting is that it is qualitative and protective rather than quantitative and extrapolation  It requires creative and cerebral inputs rather than quantitative and arithmetical ones. The available "facts" with which Xerox's top management dealt were entirely different from those used by the consultants and the staff. Not that the consultants and the staff were incapable of such inputs, rather, their reason for existence was precisely to avoid  such inputs. Consultants and staff exist in order that decisions will be based on "solid facts," not on the old seat-of-the-pants intuition or "feel for the market." They exist specially to replace what is viewed as the risky method of the past- the intuitive guesswork of sell willed entrepreneurs. Because that is the reason consultants exist, it is hardly legitimate for them to repeat, even in elaborately rationalized form what they have been hired to replace.