“Is management science” or art?: what can we learn from this misunderstanding?

Abstract

In classes and lectures of introduction to administration, when the question “What do you think: Is administration science or art?” is asked, the audience is always curious. We face here an interesting and discussion-stimulating dictum. This article has two goals: to disclose the question ambiguity – maybe one of the reasons for its survival – and from there, analyze how appropriate it is to discuss “scientificity” in our knowledge system, an important question for academic routes in that area. For the first – more modest – goal, we will use language pragmatic and semantic analysis; for the second, concentrating most of the text, theories about science nature and the intended distinction between science and non-science. Evidences arise, then, that the dictum contains a misunderstanding.