Formalism, Realism and Management Science

In most, if not all, of the standard examples of management science and Operations Research projects, it appears that somewhere along the line some part of the research effort has been devoted to a conceptualization or formalization of the system or process being studied. This conceptualization is very often called a model and may consist of a set of statements or may in fact be a physical representation of the system. It will be supposed that the term model is familiar enough to be used in a reasonably unambiguous way. The purpose of this paper is to define and discuss a problem related to models. It is felt that this is a serious problem, a problem which is becoming increasingly critical for the development of a unified science of management.