Management – an art or a science?

ESSAY

ESSAY

Management – an art or a science?

Nowadays management is everywhere from office and university to hospital or even ordinary construction because it is all about planning, organizing, coordinating and achieving a set goal. Consequently there is a wide variety of opinions about management. Is it an art or a science?

Let us start by considering the main qualities that every efficient manager should have. I think that the most important quality of all is to be competent: knowing one’s job perfectly, as well as the work of one’s subordinates. And only when you know a lot – you can do a lot. Peter Ferdinand Drucker a famous writer and management consultant has said: “They (managers) divide the work into manageable activities and then into individual jobs. They select people to manage these units and perform the jobs.” Without a great knowledge, without being competent, manager won’t be able to give purposefulorders. In fact, nobody was born with enough knowledge to be a manager this means that becoming competent is a hard work and it is more like a science than an art.

Similarly, being logical, rational an analytical is also quality that could be acquired only.

Logic is a real science with strict rules and terms that considers how parts can be combined to form a whole. It is usually used in managing as it helps manager develop strategies, plans and tactics, also to build his team in order to achieve the set goal.

Otherwise, talent or instinct, things that man could be only born with strongly improves the chances of succeeding in management. Mostly congenital abilities such as creativity or being decisive that are swaddling in the childhood are vital for innovation and flexibility in managing. In other words, creativity lets manager to think differently, to get new and original ideas to improve his work and decisiveness helps manager to make quick decisions, lets him to react and adapt to changing situations instinctively.

The best way of summing up is to quote one of the most successful managers in the world, Donald Trump: ‎”Somewhere out there are a few men with more innate talent at golf than Jack Nicklaus, or women with greater ability at tennis than Chris Evert or Martina Navratilova, but they will never lift a club or swing a racket and therefore will never find out how great they could have been. Instead, they’ll be content to sit and watch stars perform on television.” This quotation means that talent without actions is nothing, and I will add that nothing but the hard work, `set off skills’, knowledge and science with a little bit help from talent and instincts guarantees the manager luck and success.

Juozas Gliebus (FEbns0-03)