Is Management a Science - Essay Example

Science and knowledge as we know it today and the inventions and achievements the human brain has made in its history are all subject to the society in which we live and the need of the hour. McIntyre says that man possesses simulacra of morality, but has lost understanding of theoretical and practical aspects of morality (McIntyre, p.2)
Though McIntyre is talking about morality in his book ‘After Virtue’, this concept of subjective knowledge and subjective science can be linked to the management concepts we practice today.

McIntyre talks about a hypothetical situation where the current knowledge of the earth is completely erased and a future generation has to start from scratch. The concepts and practices today will definitely give them a little insight into the way human beings lived today, but without the proper social context and the behavioral patterns that we see today, it would make little sense to the scholars of tomorrow.

Management cannot be really called a science, looking at it from the logic outlined by famous philosophers like Alasdair Mcintyre, Hayden White, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Their logic has always wound around the concept that every categorization and every science is based on the social and moral context in which the people of a particular period live.

Thus, human resources as we analyze it today, as a science that looks into the talents of people and their career progress mechanisms, will have no significance whatsoever for a coming generation, which will depend more on computers and less on interacting with each other. For example, team building activities are an essential part of management today, whereas maybe twenty years down the line, managers would be interacting with their juniors and superiors through wireless or internet, without having to come face to face, even for a meeting. This trend has already set to a large extent and recruitment procedures are changing drastically, across the world.

Considering how management has evolved as a science today before an analysis can be done about the qualification of the subject as a science, the definition of science has to be analyzed. Princeton University defines science as any branch of scientific knowledge. But Fred Wilson of Rochester Insititute of Technology delves a little deeper into the term ‘science’.

According to Wilson, science is that which investigates natural phenomena, whether it is physical, biological, or social. Scientists study events that have occurred from the beginning of the universe and delve into the evolution and development of human beings and nature. Wilson describes science as a study of nearly everything.

This definitely brings us to the important question – Can management be considered as science? Wilson again says that a common understanding of science is actually taken for granted as the things scientists do. But going by his definition of science, it is just a deep investigation into the things humans see around them, the experiences they undergo, and the mysteries that confront them in the course of life.

Wittgenstein's logic analyzes this human investigation into things around him and perceives the understanding and findings of the investigation as purely subjective. Management principles today are just as subjective as any other subject that has been studied by scientists around the world.

A quick look into history will show that many scientists like Galileo and Copernicus, were condemned as heretics for disproving the common notions encouraged by the Church – these included notions that earth is flat and it is the center of the universe. Both concepts were disproved by scientists later on. Darwin’s evolution theory was subject to much criticism, as it was a far cry from the concept of God as the creator of all things-just another example of how science can be subjective.

But science, throughout the ages, has tried to provide solutions for the dilemmas and predicaments of the human mind. The problems that grapple one generation are not necessarily the problems of the next. Agriculture was an invention for the pre-historic man, a way of life for the people in the Middle Ages, and an insufficient means of livelihood for many farmers in the developing countries of the world today.