The managers are coming: administrative rationality and life in tomorrow's laboratory

In 1980, ASMT-CMU students and alumni established the John C. Lang Memorial Trustee Award for Administration and Management to "recognize outstanding performance in the communication of ideas and information in administration and laboratory management and to encourage individuals to disseminate their information to the profession." Winners of this award are commissioned to prepare a manuscript for publication in the American Journal of Medical Technology. This article is the second in the John C. Lang Memorial Series. Its author, John R. Kimberly, PhD, is Associated Professor of Management and Health Care Systems at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. In the following article Dr. Kimberly takes a long, cold look at the impact that a number of current trends, both in the medical world and outside it, are likely to have on the nature of work and working relationships in the clinical laboratory.