Why Even Management Fashions Need at Least Some Scientific Credibility
New management approaches often trumpet their rigorous scientific bases. It is stressed that the inventor of the new fashion works at a renowned university, that the method is based on empirical research, and that great thinkers lie behind the key ideas.
In the most extreme cases, it is claimed that the new method is based on a ‘new science’ which illuminates the ‘hidden dimension in the social process that each of us encounters in our everyday life’. Science therefore must not remain inside the ivory tower; it ‘needs to be performed with the mind of wisdom’. What is required is no less than ‘a new synthesis among science, social change, and the evolution of self’, that is, a ‘transformation of science’ that is ‘no less revolutionary than’ – and this is by far the most popular historical comparison – ‘Galileo Galilei’s’. And just to nip any potential criticism in the bud, it is worth adding that the resistance from ‘the incumbent knowledge holders will be no less fierce than the one that Galilei met in the Catholic Church’.
For an academic working with systems theory, this fixation on science is irritating. Management methods do not need scientific legitimacy. Rather, the justification for a management method, one would suspect, lies in its purposeful and practicable nature, in the extent to which it allows organizations to solve the fundamental problems they face. And this is what its proponents should emphasize, for ultimately the only relevant question for those wondering whether to implement some new management approach or other is: will it be useful?
In the scientific context, by contrast, the only relevant question is whether a claim is true or false. At least in the established sciences, scientists therefore address themselves to other scientists. The question of whether some bit of knowledge is useful to others is at best of secondary importance.
Andrzej Huczynski suspects that one reason for management fashions’ fixation on science could be status anxiety among managers and consultants. While the formal training for those in established professions, such as medicine, law, or theology, is academically rigorous and takes place for the most part at universities, training for managers and consultants, Huczynski points out, does not possess a comparable academic status and does not necessarily take place at universities. This perceived difference in status means that managers and consultants are especially receptive to scientific justifications for new management fashions.
However, in order for management fashions to create an impression of scientific rigour, it is, paradoxically, not essential that they observe scientific standards. The great thinkers who supposedly inspire these new approaches are not discussed in any great detail, let alone accurately quoted. Rather, they are mentioned merely in passing to generate an impression of scientific legitimacy, and thus it is impossible to trace ideas back to their sources.
The methodologies and case selections in management books are so superficial that any scientifically minded reader will find it very hard to make heads or tails of them. It is understandable that scientists insist on higher standards, but this demand rests on a fundamental misunderstanding of the function of the pretence to scientific rigour in this area.
