Art or science.

Text 1

Like most things in our modern, changing world, the function of management is becoming more complex. The role of a manager today is much different from what it was one hundred years, fifty years or even twenty-five years ago. At the turn of the century, for example, the business manager’s objective was to keep his company running and to make a profit. Most firms were production oriented. Few constraints affected management’s decisions. Governmental agencies imposed little regulations on business. The modern manager must now consider the environment in which the organization operates and be prepared to adopt a wider prospective. That is, the manager must have a good understanding of management principles, an appreciation of the current issues and broader objectives of the total economic political, social, and ecological system in which we live, and he must possess the ability to analyze complex problems.

The modern manager must be sensitive, and responsive to the environment - that is he should recognize and be able to evaluate the needs of the total context in which his business functions, and he should act in accord with his understanding.

Modern management must possess the ability to interact in an evermore-complex environment and to make decisions. A major part of the manager’s job will be to predict what the environment needs and what changes will occur in the future.

Organizations exist to combine human efforts in order to achieve certain goals. Management is the process by which these human efforts are combined with each other and with material resources. Management encompasses both science and art. In designing and constructing plans and products, management must draw on technology and physical science, of course, and, the behavioral sciences also can contribute to management. In handling people and managing organizations it is necessary to draw on intuition and subjective judgment. But although the artistic side of management may be declining in its proportion of the whole process it will remain central and critical portion of your future jobs. In short:

- Knowledge (science) without skill (art), or dangerous;

- Skill (art) without knowledge (science) means stagnancy and inability to pass on learning;

Text 2