Perspectives on MS Applications---All Around the Model

It has been the practice in recent years for management scientists and, to some degree, managers to question the effectiveness of management science in the business organization and to seek means for increasing this effectiveness. We have been particularly concerned with “bridging the gap” between the management scientist and the decision making manager. An especially poignant article on this subject was written by Dr. C. Jackson Grayson, Dean of the School of Business Administration of Southern Methodist University, and for a period of sixteen months, Chairman of the Price Commission in Phase II of the Economic Stabilization Program. The article is essentially critical of management scientists for their failure to meet the needs of decision making executives. It points out that the total impact of management scientists has been small, that they are operating in a world which is far removed from the real world of most managers, and that they describe and structure non-existent management problems, tackle relatively minor problems with overkill tools, omit real variables from messy problems, and build elegant models comprehensible to only their colleagues. Further, he states that when confronted with these facts, the management scientist lays the blame largely on the manager himself.