Is Management a Science or an Art? From Theory to Practice of Management

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this article is to discuss and show that management is a science, not just an art. Decision-making in the enterprise requires talent and special skills supported by the right qualifications. According to Tatarkiewicz, management can be considered as an art, which can be interpreted as follows: “(...) man’s conscious creation is a work of art always when it recreates reality, shapes forms, or expresses experience, yet it is able either to delight, or touch, or shock” (Tatarkiewicz, 1972). On the other hand, the company management is understood as a continuous process of making decisions based on reliable knowledge, observations and experiences – it is, therefore, a science, and modern managers are not just passive consumers of research knowledge, but also its creators. Contemporary theories focus attention on constructing appropriate models, which support the decisions of managers allowing them to somehow “spy” and observe the effects of their decisions. The aim of the paper is to show that in the modern economy, design models to support the management of the enterprise is the science that uses the achievements of other sciences, creative adaptation of these achievements in modeling phenomena occurring in the world economy. The aim of this article is to show that management sciences are increasingly exploiting modern knowledge to build models for developing practical concepts of management systems.

Design/Methodology/Approach – The authors present the review of mathematical models, computer models (used in situations where the analytical models cannot find the best solution), and in particular artificial intelligence algorithms and selected models of dynamic system for managing the organization and some examples of applications.

Findings – The results obtained show that in the management sciences, many models are used to support managerial decisions. Of course, the achievements of other sciences are very often used, management is of an application, but also of scientific nature, because, in order to skillfully use knowledge from other fields, decision-making models should be developed to solve problems in management and allow to use the achievements of these other areas.

Research limitations/implications – The limitations of this paper result from the fact that only selected models are presented in the article. The authors hope that these selected models will be the argument that management science is becoming more and more science and not an art only.

Originality/Value – This paper presents the review of modern methods used in management sciences to show that modern management is more a science than an art.