What is Management Science?
Management is often described as the art of achieving goals through other
people. As an academic discipline, Management Science seeks to apply
scientific rigour to the study of complex organizations and the
people within these organizations, to understand how they
tick and to provide sound evidence that helps managers understand what works
and what doesn't work in achieving performance.
Management Science borrows from economics and physics in its
attempt to describe its theories in formal models and to use econometrics
and statistics to test the predictions of these models on the basis of
observational or experimental data.
At a practical level, Management Scientists seek to help managers improve their
insights in the effective and efficient design and operation of
the systems they manage, and to
communicate these insights to their management team, up and down the
organization, and to external stakeholders. The ultimate goal is to
enable managers to make more confident, defendable,
fact-based decisions that lead to better performance.
Management
Science is applied in both the private and public sectors, and
across business functions, from finance
to marketing and operations.
Management Science is particularly relevant when improvements in systems
are far from obvious
and require a careful analysis of the underlying complexities.
A Management
Science model consists of two elements: (i) a collection of variables that
represent in some way the "state" of the system
and (ii) formal representations of the relationships between these variables,
typically in the form of mathematical or computational models.
Establishing sensible quantifiable
relationships between system performance and its driving forces,
on the basis of
available knowledge and data is at the core of Management Science
work. To this end, Management Scientists make heavy use of
statistics, mathematics, economics, computer science, and
a good portion of common sense.
However, the best model is useless if it cannot
be communicated to those who make decisions and are held accountable for them
and to those who implement
these decisions. The modelling itself is only the technical
aspect of Management Science work. The development of
effective strategies for the communication of models
up and down an organisation, to internal and external stakeholders,
and the effective use of models in challenging prevalent orthodoxies,
communicating new insights and changing mindsets
is a second and equally important aspect of Management Science.