[Solution] Quantitative Management Perspective
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Author: Sarah Bennett
A new perspective on management, the quantitative perspective, emerged during World War II. Government and military planners discovered that mathematical techniques developed by scientific management researchers decades earlier could help them deploy forces efficiently. After the war, companies began to use the same techniques to manage their workforces, plants, and equipment.
Two Branches of Quantitative Management
The quantitative management perspective focuses on using mathematical models and computers to aid in decision making and increase economic effectiveness. It has two branches:
- Management science focuses on using mathematical models to represent reality, aid in decision making and measure results. A manager might use mathematical modeling to decide how many workers should staff different facilities or set up a computer simulation to determine how well a product would withstand accidental damage.
- Operations management but is less technical than management science, and is used to improve business operations and produce goods and services more efficiently. Examples of operations management include managing inventory, managing supply chains, and planning shipping routes.
Note that management science is not the same thing as scientific management, the classical management theory from the early twentieth century. The similarity in names is purely coincidental.
Contributions and Limitations of Quantitative Management
While quantitative management has brought significant improvements to organizational efficiency, it also has limitations that managers should understand.
Select the term that best completes the sentence.
Quantitative management focuses on using to improve decision making and efficiency.
View Explanation
Quantitative management focuses on using mathematical models to aid in decision making and increase effectiveness.
Select the correct response to the following question.
Which of the following is a downside of the widespread use of the quantitative management perspective?
- Its theories about human behavior may lead managers to oversimplify their expectations of people.
- Managers may perceive numbers as objective facts, but the results of quantitative analysis are only as good as the underlying assumptions.
- Managers who apply mathematical models in the workplace tend to treat workers as if they are machines.
View Explanation
Models are only as good as their underlying assumptions. However, their mathematical nature may lend them an aura of objective truth. Other potential problems with the quantitative management perspective are that it does not explain or predict the behavior of people; managers may also develop mathematical analysis skills at the expense of other important skills.
Oversimplifying human behavior is a problem some have observed in the work of the human relationists; the quantitative management perspective does not deal with human behavior. Treating workers like cogs in a machine was a characteristic of the scientific management approach of the early twentieth century.
