a) Management is a process of planning, coordinating, motivating and controlling.
b) The use of scientific methods involves searching systematically for evidence to prove or disapprove some theoretical proposition.
c) Early examples of attempts to apply the methods of science to management were provided by F.W. Taylor and the Scientific Managers, who observed and measured work in order to establish more efficient ways of working.
d) Those such as Fayol, Urwick and Brech who attempted to define certain laws or principles of management also may be included amongst the users of scientific or rational methods.
e) In more recent times, the scientists are generally social scientists, interested in the study of human behaviour in organizations. Their methods are based on observation and analysis of people as individuals and in groups.
f) Management has also been described as “ getting things done through people”. The application of scientific methods has shown that it is easier to record, measure and evaluate information about things, and much more difficult to make consistent sense of human behaviour.
g) Scientific methods have made management more exact in terms of measuring and predicting things, but have done much less to prove that management is a science rather than an art.
