The OR/MS Ecosystem: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats

ManMohan S. Sodhi () and Christopher S. Tang ()
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ManMohan S. Sodhi: Cass Business School, City University London, London EC1Y 8TZ, United Kingdom
Christopher S. Tang: Anderson School, University of California, Los Angeles, California 90095

Operations Research, 2008, vol. 56, issue 2, 267-277

Abstract: This paper is dedicated to Arthur Geoffrion, who serves as role model of a great researcher, educator, and practitioner. We believe that research, teaching, and practice are becoming increasingly disengaged from one another in the OR/MS ecosystem. This ecosystem comprises researchers, educators, and practitioners in its core along with end users, universities, and funding agencies. Continuing disengagement will result in OR/MS occupying only niche areas and disappearing as a distinct field even though its tools would live on. To understand the reasons for this disengagement better and to engender discussion among academics and practitioners on how to counter it, we present the ecosystem's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Incorporated in this paper are insights from a cluster of sessions at the 2006 INFORMS meeting in Pittsburgh (“Where Do We Want to Go in OR/MS?”) and from the literature.

Keywords: operations research; management science; SWOT analysis; ecosystem; change management (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

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