The development of management sciences/operational research discourses: surveying the trends in the US and the UK

A Paucar-Caceres ()
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A Paucar-Caceres: Manchester Metropolitan University Business School

Journal of the Operational Research Society, 2011, vol. 62, issue 8, 1452-1470

Abstract: Abstract This paper explores the trends in American and British management science/operational research (MS/OR) during the last 25 years. We argue that British MS/OR has developed a soft and systemic approach to MS/OR practice, which has resulted in the emergence of a number of interpretive and critical-oriented methodologies. American MS/OR practice has remained closed to the positivistic discourse. Using a set of keywords and authors’ names associated with the main features of the interpretive and critical MS discourses, we surveyed articles published in three major US MS/OR journals. We compare these results with trends in the UK MS/OR scene. Findings appear to confirm the different directions taken by the MS/OR practice across the Atlantic. The paper posits possible reasons underpinning these differences: firstly, the particular methodological path followed by the British MS/OR, from early ‘soft systems’ applications in the early 1970s to the now well-established ‘Problem Structuring Methods’; and secondly, continuous engagement between the systems and MS/OR British communities (a dialogue that seems not to have occurred in the US). The paper contributes to a reflection on the MS/OR historical developments and contrasts these developments in both countries, two areas of OR significantly under-researched.

Keywords: systems thinking; soft OR; problem structuring methods; history of OR; management sciences methodologies; philosophy of OR (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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DOI: 10.1057/jors.2010.109

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