Technology: Knowledge – The New Resource

Part 6: Technology: Following the Right Orders

Since World War II, we have created a brand new resource: knowledge. As late as the mide-1940s, General Motors carefully concealed the fact that one of its top three men had a Ph.D. Quite obviously, a respectable man went to work as a water boy at the age of 14, and worked his way up from there. Now, Ph.Ds and MBAs are commonplace, and as they represent a tremendous capital investment. But for all that this costs, we’re not getting back much back. We still don’t know how to apply all that high-priced knowledge. And knowledge evaporates unless it’s used and augmented.

The Science of Management

By now it should be clear that there is much to be gained from the study of management as a science. To be sure, management will always remain somewhat of an art. The talent, experience, vision, courage, and character of managers will always be major factors in their performance and in that of their enterprises. But this is true of physicians, too, and they are practicing science. As with medicine, managers will become more effective as their foundation of organized systematic knowledge and search grows stronger, and as their roots in a real discipline of management and entrepreneurship grow deeper.

In much of the literature of the management science, the emphasis is on specific techniques rather than on principles, on the efficiency of the part rather than on the performance of the whole. But the business enterprise is a system of interdependent parts. The whole of a system is not necessarily improved if one particular function or part is improved or made more efficient. In some cases, the best way to strengthen the system may be to weaken a part, and actually make it less precise or less efficient!

To proceed from a systematic approach in business, management scientists ought to begin where all scientists begin – with basic definitions of the concepts that provide direction to their study. From that solid foundation, management science can proceed towards its main goal, which is to enable business take greater risks.