The OR/MS Ecosystem: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats
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In the March/April issue of Operations Research, ManMohan Sodhi and Christopher Tang look at operations research/management science and discuss how research, teaching, and practice interact in our field. From the abstract:
"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."
This article, dedicated to Art Geoffrion who, as the authors state, is a “role model of a great research, educator and practitioner” in OR/MS, is a call for increased interaction between all those interested in our field.
"For an ecosystem to thrive, efforts have to be made in increasing healthy interaction on many fronts. Specifically,…, we believe that (1) academic journals editors could serve as catalysts for making the ecosystem healthier by publishing more multidisciplinary papers that reflect the core strengths and uniqueness of OR/MS, (2) researchers could initiate efforts for strengthening the links with end users and practitioners, and (3) educators (especially in business schools) could enlist support from practitioners and end users to motivate more students to become OR/MS practitioners or end users.
"
You can find the full paper
.The editors of Operations Research have invited two prominent educators and researchers to comment on this paper.
The first is Alexis Tsoukiàs of the Université Paris Dauphine. Dr. Tsoukiàs is the Immediate Past President of EURO, the Association of European Operational Research Societies. In his commentary, Dr. Tsoukiàs raises a number of points with regards to the Sodhi and Tang’s SWOT analysis. For instance, he makes the point that the world of OR/MS is not well defined:
"Who is our target? A rough check of the “eco-system” dimension tells that we have around the world 35000 people who actually recognise themselves as Operational Researchers (this is the world membership of IFORS). If we consider that only 1 out of 10 is “conscious” of being an Operational Researchers then our ecosystem has a potential dimension of 350000 world-wide. This is a fraction of any engineering branch in any major Economic Area in the world which makes us automatically a “niche” community at least quantitatively. Now the question is: to whom we are talking? The 35K existing community, the 350K potential community or a 35M target who should be diverted to our discipline?
"
He also identifies areas of research that he believes are understudied, particularly identifying what it is that OR/MS analysts do:
"Research in OR/MS is very sophisticated today and this is a sign of the vitality of our research community. However, my impression is that among the research subjects to address we are missing the problem of analysing the decision aiding process from our perspective. With the noticeable exception of work done mainly in UK on Problem Structuring …, there is very little attention paid in analysing what exactly are the activities of an OR/MS analyst and the interactions with his/her client.
"
The full commentary of Dr. Tsoukiàs is available
.Our second commentary comes from Dr. Michael Rothkopf. Dr. Rothkopf spent a career furthering interactions between academia and industry in OR/MS. In his commentary, Dr. Rothkopf takes issue with “the overstatement of the weaknesses of the profession and, especially the role of academics in this weakness”.
"For example, the paper states that “It does not
help that practitioners are but little engaged in OR/MS journals. Even the practitioner-oriented
journal Interfaces has only two practitioners on its 26 member editorial board.” The paper fails to appreciate that a substantial number of academics are also practitioners. This includes Art Geoffrion, to whom the paper is dedicated, and over half of the (non-author) academics credited in the paper’s acknowledgements section with being presenters at the motivating cluster at the Pittsburgh INFORMS meeting. In addition, while 24 of the 26 members of the Interfaces editorial board have academic affiliations, at least half of the 26, including Gene Woolsey of the Colorado School of Mines, are serious practitioners."
Dr. Rothkopf agrees that the publishing paradigm can work against better interactions between academia and industry, with some important caveats:
"Unfortunately, the paper is correct that, “Improvement on something already published by garnering more mathematical results under slightly different or more general assumptions is one of the formulas for getting a paper published, which in turn advances a young researcher’s career.”
However, this is a short-sighted strategy. It is counter balanced, in part, by the fact that most such papers get few citations while seminal papers that open up important new areas of application get many citations, which in turn advances a researcher’s career."
Tragically, shortly after providing this commentary, Dr. Rothkopf passed away, leaving our field with one less voice bringing together industry and academia. We are glad to have his commentary, and regret that he will not be part of the ongoing discussion about the future of our field.
You can find Dr. Rothkopf’s full commentary
.We now invite you to read the Sodhi and Tang paper, and the commentaries, and continue the discussion. What is the state of our field? What steps are needed to strengthen it? What lies in the future?
Comments
Posted by Jon Caulkins on 05/22/2008 at 12:00 pm
Posted by Paul Rubin on 04/28/2008 at 12:00 pm
Posted by Michael Trick on 04/24/2008 at 12:00 pm
Posted by Brenda Dietrich on 04/24/2008 at 12:00 pm
Posted by Michael Trick on 04/24/2008 at 12:00 pm