Management Science: Science of Managing and Managing of Science

As the first editor-in-chief of Management Science, I expressed my ambition for the society (TIMS) and its journal. My notion was that a society and journal in the subject of a science of management would investigate how humans can manage their affairs well. For me, “well” means “ethically,” or in the best interest of humanity in a world of filthy oppression and murder (I'm a philosopher and therefore have a philosophical bias, the same bias Plato had when he wrote the Republic). I find that 40 years later management scientists have been inventing all kinds of mathematical models and novelties (management by objectives, game theory, artificial intelligence, expert systems, TQM, chaos theory), and none of these has contributed much to the ethical benefit of human beings. Hence, in 1993, we are still waiting for a science of management to emerge, although there are some lights at the end of the tunnel.