Author(s): Olaf Flak / Language(s): Polish
/ Publication Year: 2018
Reasons for raising the issueMethodological problems of management science are the subject of lively discussion and interest of many contemporary representatives in management science. The discussion about the identity of management science and its methodological assumptions dates back to 1961, when H. Koontz stimulated the awareness of organizational reality researchers with the concept of a „management theory jungle”, meaning a disordered way of practicing management science with its growing ontological and epistemological controversies. Although several decades have passed since then, „we‘re still dealing with the management theory jungle, and it‘s even more extensive and vivid than ever before”. Some authors emphasize that the current situation of management science represents a crisis of these sciences, especially their philosophical and methodological foundations. S. Sułkowski even writes that this science has neither „theories nor rights, nor even a substitute for the scientific method”. The first reason for undertaking the work on the system of organizational terms as a methodological concept of management science was the fact that on the one hand, unresolvedmethodological problems in management science are subject to criticism, and on the otherhand, there is a certain degree of reconciliation with the permanent state of the “managementtheory jungle”. The second reason was the specific problems of this science, including: a dilemma whether management science belongs to idiographic or nomothetic sciences; domination of the organizational reality research based on situations at certain moments of time, which leads to a static and only temporary assessment of this reality; creation of theory in management science under the clear influence of the researcher‘s evaluation of the elements of these theories; increasing diversity of the understanding of concepts; incommensurability of the entire scientific discipline, especially in the field of methods of conducting research and interpretation of their results.The third reason of raising the issue, which, unlike the two previous ones, concernsmore with the future than the past, is the progressive digitization and automation of themodern world. Already in 1967, P. Drucker wrote that computer systems (then – „computers“– an author‘s note) would not only serve to collect information, but the algorithmswritten in them would be able to replace managers over time. Although it has not happenedyet, IT systems fill and automate more and more areas of human life, and thus, alsomanager‘s work.Research problemThe research problem, which was stated after the preliminary literature studies and after determining the reasons to raise the issue, can be presented by means of the following research question: can there be a comprehensive, coherent and formalized methodological concept of the management science which allows practicing this science in a way that solves current problems of this science?Three concepts included in this question should be clarified. First of all, the condition was made that the concept should be comprehensive. It means that it should cover all or most of the issues necessary for practicing science, such as ontological and epistemological assumptions, defined elements of science, ways of using the language, methods of inference, etc. Secondly, the assumption in the research question states that the methodological concept should be coherent, and therefore internally consistent and internally complementary. Thirdly, the concept should be formalized, so there should be strictly defined rules on how to apply individual elements of the concept, defined either in details or in the form of universal and scaled principles.Subject of researchThe subject of this book is therefore a comprehensive, coherent and formalized methodological concept of management science, whose tasks have been identified in the mentioned research problem. The essence of this concept is to represent organizational reality with certain terms, just as physical phenomena can be represented by units and their corresponding physical quantities in the SI system. However, it should be emphasized that due to the ontological and epistemological conditions of management science, the SI system is only an analogy of the created concept, and from the point of view of the chronology of work on this concept, it was the author‘s inspiration to raise the above mentioned research problem. The core of the methodological concept of management science is the organizationalterms, which were divided into primary and derivative as a result of an analysis of ontological conditions. Organizational terms represent facts occurring in the organizational reality, and these facts correspond to the ontological conception of being, widely accepted in the philosophy of science. As a result of combining this type of ontological conditions and a farreaching analogy, which is the SI system, the name of the developed methodological concept was created – the system of organizational terms.This work is therefore a voice in the discussion on the need for new methods of studyingthe organizational reality. Perhaps the use of the system of organizational terms as a methodological concept of management science will also allow for the creation of more humanindependent systems of management organization which, in certain situations, will be able to replace a human manager with a more effective robot manager.
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