Scientific Management
When you read the business news, it is very obvious that there is a great lack of scientific management. Although business and industry in capitalist nations function far more efficiently than in communist or socialist countries, they are not as efficient as they should be. Why? The Blunder is the answer. Business schools do not teach the scientific method adequately. A while ago I surveyed management books and found that only about 10% of them mention the scientific method.
Today even the term scientific management isn’t very well understood. It is often thought to mean time and motion application pioneered by Frederick Taylor in the late 1800s. Taylor is often called the father of scientific management. Remember that there are 11 mental activity stages of the scientific method. At these stages, creative, non-logical, logical, and technical methods or techniques are used. Thus, time and motion study is just one of the methods or techniques used with the scientific method. For real scientific management, the whole SM-14 formula must be applied to management problems and decisions.
When are our business schools going to recognize this and properly train their students? They teach parts of the scientific method and many techniques, such as decision science, time and motion study, etc., but not the whole scientific method and a formula such as SM-14.
