Ethics in OR/MS: past, present and future

Jean-Pierre Brans () and Giorgio Gallo ()

Annals of Operations Research, 2007, vol. 153, issue 1, 165-178

Abstract: The pervasiveness and impact on society and on every day human life of technology has led to a growing awareness that science and technology cannot be considered above or beyond the realm of value judgements and hence of ethics. This is especially true for Operations Research/Management Science (OR/MS), that particular science which is concerned with methodologies for scientifically deciding how to design and operate man-machine systems in an optimal way, usually under conditions requiring the allocation of scarce resources. Here we try to give a historical account of the growing interest for ethics within the OR/MS community from its birth to present days. Starting from attempts to define models and codes of ethical behaviour in our profession, the OR/MS community has arrived at more fundamental questions about the ethical responsibility it faces in a world of growing inequalities and in which the ever greater stress that human activities impose on the environment puts at risk the very survival of human kind. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2007

Keywords: Societal problem analysis; Ethics; Social implications of operations research practice (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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DOI: 10.1007/s10479-007-0177-1

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