"You mentioned culture! Now there's a human relations cult if I ever heard one. Human resource and organization design people are great, and out of their work have come some of the most valuable new business methods of the past 15 years. But, culture isn't one of them. It's vague, never defined, full of soft terms like happy, egalitarian, and forthright. Life just doesn't work this way. Don't misunderstand me, managers must respect their people, and we can't let strong opinions get in the way of increasing productivity. But good people want honest motivations, not games or manipulations. Yeah, I said manipulation, because that's what the culture thing is. Tell me, what kind of a culture do you like best in the classroom where you are using this book? Is that culture inconsistent with the general ideas of management we have had for years?"