Management: Art or Science?

Weighing in on this eternal debate, the Harvard Business Review has published the thoughts of Roger L Martin. This nice article makes a case for management (decision making) being at times a science and at times a work of art. At its core is the ability of the decision maker to identify whether the problem scenario is one (using his own words) "in which things cannot be other than they are". If yes, it is a perfect case for data driven logic as the basis for decisions. However, if it is not, then the right approach would be to philosophise about what could things be. This is something that needs creativity, out-of-the-box-thinking and where cold data logic derived from a rear-view point analysis is incapable of supporting.

https://hbr.org/2017/09/management-is-much-more-than-a-science