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Do you think that management is an art or a science?

F.W Taylor first defined management as a true science in 1911 with the purpose of

convincing people that all processes can be made more productive by removing related

inefficiencies, through systematic management. Further, he also described management to be

resting upon clearly defined laws, rules, and principles, as a foundation. (Taylor, 1911, p.6)

Taylor is definitely correct to certain extent but could management science be really confined to

such rigid boundaries in 1911, when management had not even started evolving? Surely not.

Managements definitive boundaries needed to be flexible and not rigid, because along with its

evolution, it was bound to grow sub-categories and then further sub-categories, etc. An example

of this will be business ethics, which suddenly became a highly relevant sub-category of business

management during the 1970s and 1980s, from a low-profile presence. ( This sudden popularity

can be attributed to the 1984 Bhopal Gas Disaster in India and the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear

disaster in the then Soviet Union). Again, some very important management concepts such as

creativity, innovation, etc. cannot be described easily using popular science. Therefore, though

management satisfies most criteria to be called a science, some of its characteristics do not make

a very convincing case in favor of it being regarded as a science.

Is management an art? Art is a process by which human beings, employ their skills of

imagination and creative thought to produce entities (this can be an idea, a painting, a pattern,

etc.) leading to emotional satisfaction and contentment. Art, unlike science, needs no logical

connections to proceed from one point to another; it can simply jump over gaps. There are plenty

of management concepts which are not straight forward and logical. For example, management

considers Intuitive leadership to be a highly effective leadership model but intuition is not a

proper scientific process. But the majority of concepts in management are logical, having rigid
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scientific bases. Thus, we cannot simply declare that management is an art on the basis of a few

concepts.

What is management then? In my personal opinion, the best thing to do here is not to try

and fit management into any pre-finalized shape. Instead, considering management to be a

hybrid mixture of science and art serves our purpose well. Here, we need to take a leaf out of

physics book which considers light energy to be both wave nature and particle, whichever suits

the existing scenario best. Therefore, in conclusion, let us consider management to be a hybrid

form of knowledge which is not exactly a science and neither, art.

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Reference

Taylor, F.W. (1911). The Principles of Scientific Management, p.7. Retrieved from

https://archive.org/details/principlesofscie1911tayl

Note: Please note that no particular writing style has been followed here. Only a reference has

been listed because of the in-text citation shown.