Page 119 - Built Expressions - Online Construction Magazine - November 2014 Issue

Managing The Mindset means management will increasingly be subsumed by computers. Future managers will need to use their creativity to challenge the constraints to both commercial success and social welfare. Creating the Future Taylor misused the term scientifc and frankly so do many scientists today. They tend to equate science with math, employing a reductionist mind- bp.blogspot.com However, a truly scientifc method set that seeks to quantify everything. applies a hypothesis driven approach designed to eliminate fawed theories. No theory can ever be proved through the scientifc method—only tested In 1908, Harvard invented the master of business and disproved or corroborated. As administration degree and created the Harvard Graduate scientifc philosopher Karl Popper School of Business Administration with a faculty of 15, famously put it, “No matter how many attracting 80 students. instances of white swans we may have observed, this does not justify the conclusion that all swans are white.” engineering and ultimately became Carnegie turned their attention to Scientists tend to develop theories the chief engineer of Midvale Steel, a philanthropy, legions of less talented that explain how things came to be. For company with only a single plant, but but professionally trained managers example, they use Darwin’s theory of one known for an analytic management amassed data and depended on evolution to explain how people came style. Taylor applied his own analytic analysis to make up for their lack to cooperate with one another, and the skills to defne the “one right way” to of creative insight. Their numbers- big bang theory to explain why stars do each and every task, which led to based, yet simplistic, search for “best formed in the universe. Science also a doubling of worker productivity. In practices” (to use the modern jargon) depends on controlled experiments to 1890, he began consulting to show squeezed out creativity and ignored the test theories. For example, a number other companies how to drive such disruptive effects that this impersonal of experiments over the past 50 years worker productivity. And by 1911, he mind-set had on laborers. Perhaps the have provided evidence confrming had codifed his philosophy in The transition from owner–entrepreneurs Albert Einstein’s general theory of Principles of Scientifc Management. to professional managers was relativity, and recent experiments at During his time as a consultant, inevitable in an era driven by physical the $9 billion Large Hadron Collider in Taylor also conducted research at labor and scale economies. However, Switzerland have uncovered evidence Dartmouth and served as a professor returning to modern times and looking of the existence of the Higgs boson, a at the new Tuck School. In addition, ahead, a focus on ‘the numbers’ fundamental particle implied by the the dean of the new Harvard Business School recruited Taylor to create a foundational course in manufacturing Simulation + Optimization = Better Together and industrial organization, further establishing the importance of the analytic approach to management. This focus on quantifcation provided needed control to the new empires that had exceeded the managerial capacity Monte Carlo Simulation Conventional Optimization The Best Decisions of their entrepreneurial founders. Better understand the range Make better decisions about Better manage what you While successful entrepreneurs like of potential outcomes allocating scarce resources control, taking into account what you don’t Vol: 3 Issue: 11 November 2014 Built Expressions PG119