Question

If research in the management area cannot be 100% scientific, why bother to do it at all? Comment on this question

Answer 1

Answer:

I can rearrange the words and add a couple of them to this statement and say that scientific research cannot be 100% accurate, so why bother to do it at all?

Management is a social science, therefore, most of the research carried out will not follow the scientific method since the number of variables are virtually infinite, e.g. there are trillions of variables in an economy like personal tastes and preferences of each individual, different income levels, how taxes affect each individual, individual savings habits, how marketing affects each individual, etc.

Some microeconomics research follows the scientific method but under very specific and controlled circumstances.

Research is an important tool for planning, and planning is one of the basic functions of management. Research can help a manger to predict future events, usually based on existing data and including new factors that can alter consumers' habits and decisions, e.g. research that tries to determine the future demand of hybrid (or electric or any other type of alternative fuel) vehicles based on historical demand of vehicles plus how will consumers' habits and preferences change in the future regarding green technologies.

Since we are dealing with humans, and humans are extremely unpredictable, research can serve management as a guide, but it doesn't represent an exact figure.

This is the same reason why no two analysts value stocks or companies in the same way, since subjective factors always exist, e.g. will large numbers of consumers accept electric cars, or will they prefer only hybrids, or would they accept other technologies like hydrogen instead. The previous Honda Civic which ran on compressed natural gas used to be the greenest car, but very few people accepted it. The Honda clarity runs on hydrogen, but still only Californians seem to like it. But Tesla is now the most valuable car company even though it barely sells any cars at all. According to market research, everyone will start buying Teslas in the near future and no one will buy any other brand (Tesla is worth more than virtually all other car companies combined), but is that research accurate? Only time will tell.