The term "operation" refers both to an economic unit, an economic subject, and to an activity in the sense of putting into operation and managing. The efforts of representatives of business administration around the turn of the century and into the 1930s and 1940s primarily focused on the management of businesses rather than on analyzing the business itself and the relationships that characterize it. Issues of bookkeeping, accounting and valuation, cost accounting, calculation and pricing policy, capital procurement and financial planning, payment and goods traffic, and organization were addressed. Undoubtedly, it is a significant scientific achievement to recognize processes and distill them from their context; to quantify and represent them and to develop suitable methods for this purpose. It requires the ability to observe, abstract, organize, and systematize— in short, to comprehend something and recognize its essential features. In this initial phase of a new science, the foundation for everything that follows is laid. However, it is only this further development— in very brief terms: the recognition of the relationships that characterize the operation and determine the events within it, the phase of theory formation, and closely related to this, the contemplation of how, based on the recognized relationships, desired outcomes can be achieved and undesired outcomes avoided— that allows, as Erich Gutenberg expressed in his famous speech celebrating the founding day of the University of Cologne in 1957, a science to mature and find its identity, granting it significance and weight.