Physicalistic Reasoning in Management Science

The main goal of this paper is to show a link between physicalistic reasoning and management problems, as well as to prove their usefulness for the quantization and computational support of decision-making under the conditions of uncertainty. The study lists a number of management-science topics juxtaposed with models derived from physics and formal descriptions of selected physical phenomena. The descriptions can be used in building models based on analogies with certain issues in management, especially related to the quantitative approach, where the definitions of measure are not well established. The most valuable contribution to management science derived from physical reasoning seems to be the introduction of a widely accepted definition of the managed system from an external and internal observer's viewpoint, and the definition of the state of the system at a given moment in time. The most promising results of the paper include the epistemological ordering, with an acceptable definition of the measure resulting from it. The physical approach offers a possibility of building an epistemological framework for management science, based on the logic of scientific discovery and combining similar results obtained from complementary disciplines, particularly psychology and social sciences.