The Natural Drift: What Happened to Operations Research?

It is hypothesized that a ‘natural drift’ has occurred, i.e., that old-style OR has remained underdeveloped relative to its more purely theoretical and practical counterparts, and the extent to which this natural drift would be truly natural is explored.

Abstract

“Crisis? What crisis?” could also have been an appropriate title for this paper. The OR/MS literature contains more than enough papers addressing the crisis in OR/MS to take the matter seriously, but it is not always clear exactly what is meant by crisis. The complaints usually concern the perceived gap between theory and practice, pointing out that there are too many theoretical and too few practice-oriented papers. This may well be true, but we suggest a slightly different view of the crisis, by hypothesizing that a ‘natural drift’ has occurred, i.e., that old-style OR has remained underdeveloped relative to its more purely theoretical and practical counterparts. To explain how this hypothesis arose, we provide an overview of the debate on professional concerns in OR/MS, and contrast it with Harvard Business Review papers providing a managerial perspective. We also explore the extent to which such a natural drift would be truly natural, by comparing the development of OR/MS to that of other professions. We arrive at a mixed conclusion. All is not well, but all is not lost either.