Is Management an Art or Science?

Management is seen as a fundamental part of human social environment and modern organisation. To define management as an art or science it is necessary to recognise the basic instinct and structure of human organisation. Chi-Kuo Mao (n.d) A human organization exists as a process of creative advancement in which the organization ceaselessly defines itself and sustains itself. The managers access to various managerial theories requires an element of instinctive response to accommodate the motivational needs of the individual. By employing instinctive human understanding to guide the individual to a more effective way of achieving the organisational goals, we could say that the act of reading or understanding of the person or situation is an art. Art meaning creative interaction with fellow human beings and the science as the structural process of implementation towards the organisational goal.

To reason that management is both art and science we should look at the role played by both in achieving the goals of the organisation. If the science part of management is the structured, planed and defined part of the organisations strategy we should remember that theories change. In the paper "Managing Complex Organisations: Complexity Thinking and Science and Art Management" Richardson (2008) quotes Maxwell "Any scientific theory, however well it has been verified empirically, will always have infinitely many rival theories that fit the available evidence just as well but that make different predictions, in an arbitrary way, for yet unobserved phenomena. (Maxwell, 2000) Therefore it becomes necessary to adapt to the changing environment and theoretical approaches.

To apply the element of art to the process it would be reasonable to say that it is the act of relaying the vision of the strategy, by the manager, that motivates people. This question is raised (David Atkinson, online) Is, then, the potential of Art that the organizational vision holder (the CEO, the Entrepreneur, for example) holds an artistic responsibility to interpret and communicate his or her vision in a manner that can be related to by the non-Artist?
It could be reasonable to assume that the art element discussed here is in fact the art of leadership. If this is the case then it would be natural to assume that good management involves strong leadership and creative communication of scientific concepts.

Using art as an explanation for the inspirational element and science as the delivery mechanism makes sense in terms of the understanding of the managerial processes. Encapsulating both instinctive human interaction and by employing strategies that are based on known theories, and there effectiveness, we can apply a reasonable assumption that making people more effective through imparting vision is art and the way in which they achieve that vision is by a route of structured theory, the science.

Reference

Atkinson D.(n.d) Thinking The Art of Management Stepping into 'Heidegger's Shoes' EBook Palgrave Macmillan (Online) avaiable from: http://www.palgrave.com/PDFs/0230553745.Pdf (Accessed 27th March 2009)

Chi-Kuo Mao, (n.d)Principles of Human Organization Change, Institute of Business and Management, National Chiao-Tung University, Taiwan (Online) Available from:
http://necsi.org/events/iccs6/papers/83daf36ba577c943ba83e8bbf809.pdf (Accessed 27th March 2009)

Maxwell N. (2000) "A new conception of science" Physics World August 17-18

Richardson K. A.(2008) "Managing Complex Organisations: Complexity Thinking and Science and Art Management" E:CO Issue Vol 10 No 2 p17

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