Purpose – The purpose of the article is to present MARC, a model for assessing – and improving – the health of organisations from a humanistic point of view.

Design/methodology/approach – The model has been developed in an organisational development clinical research tradition. The validity of the model rests on logical reasoning grounded in organisational and salutogenic research, and on it appearing useful to clients and members in organisations where it has been employed.

Findings – When using the MARC model to structure analyses and facilitate discussions in organisations that have sought aid, the model has helped reveal major sources of imbalance between its four aspects: meaning, authority, rationality and care. A major survey revealed no statistically significant differences between men and women. This indicates that the MARC concepts are general rather than gender-specific. The results also contradicted the often stated notion that men emphasise “hard” aspects (A and R) while women emphasise “soft” ones (M and C).

Originality/value – The paper demonstrates that support for the importance of each of the four aspects – meaning, authority, rationality and care – as perspectives in analysing and understanding organisations can be found in the organisational research literature. The authors' contribution is to argue the case that they represent four important human needs that need to be attended to in balance in an organisation if cooperation between the individuals in the organisation is to be sustainable from a human-centred perspective. MARC is designed to help visualise and focus this balance.