Discuss the utility of statistics as a managerial tool. Also describe its limitations?

Question

I am student of Master of Business administration. From Virtula Unirversity of Pakistan. Please give me opinion bout my question. I shall be thank ful to you for this kind act.

Answer 1

Statistics help us to examine trends amongst groups of people, however and especially in management you must account for the motivations of the individual.  For instance, no individual wants to be seen as a statistic.  What applies to most does not apply to all, you will not lead and motivate others by developing grotesque caricatures of them in your mind out of convenience and a desire to explain the nature of your organization.  You can arm yourself with all of the statistics that you want but unless you can “read” people at an intuitive and interpersonal level you will hopelessly fail as a manager.

Furthermore, statistics are a very imperfect thing, they are biased observations and favor the general over the specific by their very nature.

With that said, they are the only real form of empirical evidence that we have in terms of predicting the behavior of the very curious and illusive human animal.  Globally, we are trending to favor such deterministic notions as it grants us some degree of control (if only illusionary) over others.