When it comes to the performance of the primary task of an institution—whether economic goods and services in the case of the business, health care in that of a hospital, or scholarship and higher education in that of the university—the rule is to optimize. There, managers have to base their decisions on what is right rather than on what is acceptable. But in dealing with the constituencies outside and beyond this narrow definition of the primary task, managers have to think politically—in terms of the minimum needed to placate and appease and keep quiet constituent groups that otherwise might
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