Greenhouses of Science for Management

The "Management Sciences" must have a science foundation upon which to build a structure to serve management. To date, the sciences making the greatest contribution have been mathematical and physical in nature. But theory, experimental design, and measurement are rapidly revolutionizing our knowledge of the human being so that the psychological and biological sciences may be expected to make a greater and greater contribution to the management sciences. This paper reports the work being done on the research frontier at the University of Michigan in connection with organisms as systems, the reactions of groups, models of human preference, the experimental exploration of human observation, detection, and decision making, and the analysis and synthesis of speech. While these areas are not useful for immediate application at the user's level in the management sciences, a recent symposium on the subject provided a short tour through these greenhouses of science for management from which applicable science may be expected to emanate. The material of the symposium will be reported in the paper.