Management science: current researches and developments – part I

Citation

Dr Werner Schuhmann, P. (2007), "Management science: current researches and developments – part I", Kybernetes, Vol. 36 No. 3/4. https://doi.org/10.1108/k.2007.06736caf.001

Management science: current researches and developments – part I

On management science: an informal communication

You have chosen a most important but extremely difficult working title: management science. Is it a science or an art? Which trends of influence in real organizations of all kind(not only business enterprises) had the confusing amount of different and quite often conflicting approaches with this label, lets say in the last 50 years compared with other“consulting” approaches? Which major obstacles have to be overcome:

• •

  within the scientific systems community (I am not sure, whether there is a community or there are only autistic “schools”);

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  with neighbour-disciplines such as economics, sociology; and

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  with potential “customers”?

Which strategy is promising; can systems science stop the confusion of its many tongues, or is there no strategy at all, but only an evolutionary “struggle” irritating autopoietic systems as well as the theories about it, and one can only wait and see? These are only a few questions!

Henry Mintzberg wrote in his latest book, to teach the art of management to somebody, who never worked in a leading management position, is comparable with the attempt, to teach psychology to a person, who never met a human being before.

I do not agree with this statement. I amconvinced, that management can be improved by science. But which one is suitable? In my opinion, management is a “profession suigeneris”: it is not chemistry, engineering, business administration, finance or marketing, etc. Most employees start with such an education, but as managers, only equipped withthis kind of knowledge and experience, they are amateurs. Of course most of them are learning by doing. But, and this is crucial, also most of them are learning on the basis ofthe prevailing paradigm deep in their mind, regarding organizations as well as society and people as “trivial machines”. For example, it is astonishing, how intelligent peoplethinking and/or feeling with this paradigm, misunderstand the Viable System Model (VSM) as an optimal organization plan or, even worse, confuse it with a “moral machine”with an unique deus ex machina, residing in System 5.

Thus, at least two problems have to be picked up or even attacked:

1. 1.

   which elements of the irritating, often conflicting variety of sciences ofcommunication and control of the “non trivial machine” are adequate; and

2. 2.

   how can this knowledge be conveyed to managers and their specificoutside-observers (e.g. other managers, organizations)?

Autopoietic systems are regarded as informational closed and self-referential; they learn by transforming selected irritations (observations, i.e. distinctions and indications sensu Spencer Brown, differences that make a difference for them) into information. That means that also the “outside” of any system is an internal construct.

Starting with this widely accepted assumption, management always works in paradox situations:

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  It has to be a part of the hierarchy, to be heard from many, and to work against hierarchy and promote heterarchy, to involve many.

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  It has to be a kind of joker and Sysiphos at the same time: it has to observe permanently communications and decisions, sowing irritations, differences, into this process and hope for “better” (different) selections, until evolution/ autopoiesis works or they are fired. The modus operandi of self-referential systems requires a quite different approach of planning and forecasting compared to common methods as well as different forms of evaluation of the success of management. The prevailing procedures are still “presumption of knowledge” (v. Hayek).

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  Yet management of all kinds of organizations (including government, universities, hospitals, churches) is expected to be “successfull” whatever that means for the different lop-sided stakeholder with conflicting interests. However, at present, stakeholders do not care that managers have to live with the “autopoietic beast” have to fight against the fortress of the trivial machine paradigm, and to accept the risk of postponed knowing, as inimitably put by Karl Weick: “How can I know what we did until I see what we produced?” Thus, you have to include the stakeholder as well into the learning process, e.g. open their eyes for circular causality and recursion, to improveorganizational change.

Prof. Dr Werner SchuhmannWiesbaden, Germany