Behavioral Science—Relating the Logic of Management Science to Executive Decision-Making

Recently I have had some pleasantly positive responses from working managers in profit and non-profit organizations, as well as colleagues and readers of this column, to the effect that it is worth teaching scientific process as a very practical approach to general management problem-solving. That is, the operating manager can use aspects of scientific method as a convenient strategy for making decisions and evaluating the impact afterwards. If this seems rather obvious to many readers, they must realize that it is not obvious to many managers (perhaps a large majority). Furthermore, it is only recently that even a sizable minority of faculty teaching in Business schools has subscribed to this point of view.