I am sure a lot of you will be chuckling at this title and asking yourself what new light I can cast on this old cliché. It has been a hot topic for discussion, then gone stale, revived as and went and then gone stale again. Some people have even given up discussing something like this. And as you may guess opinions vary from those who fervently declare Management an Art and those who postulate the Scientific approach to Management. I do promise to answer this question once and for all, by casting things in a new light and answering the question from a different perspective.

Before we go on in this article, it would be interesting for you the reader to come to an instinctive response on whether you think Management should be a soft and unpredictable Art or a hard-nosed and cold as steel Science. Go with your first instinct.

Of course most of you will probably to say a bit of Art and a bit of Science. From a Tradeoff point of view, that certainly sounds like a good answer, given that you have understood one of the Key Management Principles.

But as I promised, I would not give you this same answer at the end of the article. Read on.

When one calls Management an Art, it implies that precision or predictability is not the focus. There are certainly some trends and practices but no fixed train of thought as to when to do something or when to do the other thing. Most things have to be learnt from experience.

There has been practise of Management all throughout history since ancient times when Egyptians "manage" slaves in the construction of the pyramids to how Kings managed their lands, officials and people. Armies like the mighty Greek, Persian or Roman armies were more organised than managed and are thus excluded as examples.

One more common aspect of Management as an art form is observed in the relationship between the Master and the Apprentice. In all aspects of life from the all-mighty King to the humble cobbler, the Master managed the Apprentice. You might think that this is actually more of a passing down of skills from one generation to another and wonder where themanagement aspect comes in. Looking closely, the benefit to the Master was that the Apprentice would do most of the leg work in the profession while the Master handled the finer aspects. The Master thus had to manage the Apprentice in his apprenticeship to ensure that the Apprentice reduced the physical load of his work while managing his training and development process.

The Art of Management comes in as to how fast to push the apprentice or how slow he should go. And when the apprentice was ready to move on, the Master had to manage the process of letting him go. Given that the Masters in olden days did not have progress reports, training KPIs or evaluation systems, Management was naturally an Art.

Thankfully Kahneman and Tversky (1974) have kicked start the understanding of this Art form, which they have called heuristics and their 3 cognitive biases of Representativeness, Availability and Adjustment and Anchoring. Roger and myself have a piece that explains this in a rather humourous light.

So there you have the history of how Management evolved as an Art.

Moving on, modern day management with its various systems, reports and methodologies have certainly given Management a more Scientific feel. The modern firm has introduced the role of Managers who are charged with managing the resources available to them to produce certain desired outcomes. These outcomes more often than not, should be measurable. Of course we must attribute these two key Management Principles to Peter Drucker (1909 – 2005), the father of Modern Management.

Together these two Key Management Principles give Management the hard-nosed objectivity and precision of measurability.

But the person who deserves the credit for putting Science into Management is really Frederick Taylor (1856 – 1915). Taylor published his book, The Principles of Scientific Management, in 1911. His approach, as reflecting the post-Industrial Revolution era, was the initial proponent of an approach that was more Scientific. Quoting Taylor, he saw four additional roles for managers.

It is interesting how Taylor mentioned replacing "rule-of-thumb" with a "science". This along with the training, co-operation framework and specialization are the cornerstones of how modern day firms have evolved.

And there you have the starting point on why Management today has incorporated the Scientific element.

And the result of all this is that Managers today use both Artistic and Scientific methods in their management work. Those who are more experienced would naturally favour a more Artistic or heuristic related approach to management. If your years of experience tell you that option A is better than option B, then it is hard to argue otherwise to you. Those who have more academic background and knowledge would naturally favour a more Scientific and objective to management. If your calculations or estimations or surveys tell you that option A is better than option B, then it is hard to argue otherwise to you.

And that really is the reality in the world today.

The critics of Artistic methods will claim that this is the sole preserve of old farts who love to roll off their years of experience and hearsay. And when you expose the cognitive biases of heuristics which Kahneman and Tversky (1974) have so kindly enlightened the world with, there are too many inherent flaws with Artistic methods.

To answer these critics, experience does make a difference, but only if you can appreciate and understand your experience and not draw on it like heuristics. Experience while not the be-all-and-end-all, does make a difference as you always need to do things at least once to fully appreciate it. So some experience is rather critical.

The critics of Scientific methods on the other hand claim that the real world is too complicated to be modeled or reported. These are the folks who will nitpick at all the assumptions in any model/report and then claim that the entire model/report is worthless because the assumptions are too simplistic and naïve. The real world is more complicated than that.

To answer these critics, the true exponents of modeling will tell you that it is not about having a model that is accurate to the last cent. A model is a best estimate of the situation and besides approximating certain values should also reveal certain conclusions. In any case, if everything could be modeled and understood in a spreadsheet, businesses would not face any uncertainty or risk. So there is value in the measured approach.

I am sure there must be those of you who are just waiting for me to get to the point. And really if you follow the drift of my discussion here, you might have already seen the light. This whole debate of is Management an Art or a Science is really a Tradeoff (one of the Key Management Principles) of two extremes. One extreme relies on experience or heuristics while the other relies on objective estimations or surveys. There is no right and wrong in a Tradeoff. And clearly no extreme is superior to the other.

All this clearly points out that different management situations would require a different combination of Artistic methods and Scientific methods. And the decision of what combination to use is a Skill. Yes that is the answer. MANAGEMENT IS A SKILL. Some people have it and some people do not. It is not a function of experience or knowledge, it is a skill which can be honed.

So the next time you hear a debate on whether Management is an Art or a Science, please enlighten your fellow human beings. And let us all put an end to this debate. To continue the debate would merely serve to highlight one’s lack of understanding in the area of Management.

Any opinions or comments ?