OR/MS Today - April 2001

OR/MS Today - April 2001

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One Problem OR Hasn't Solved

By Christoph Mandl

Back in the 70s when I was still an assistant professor at the Institute for Operations Research, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, we once received a letter asking for medical advice. Now it may seem strange to ask an operations researcher for medical advice, but in a German-speaking environment, it's almost expected. The most common meaning of the German word for "operations" is "surgery." "Research," on the other hand, was easily translated without misinterpretation — or so we thought.

Some operations research people in German-speaking countries, aware that they were considered "surgery researchers" by the non-informed, invented other words to describe their profession: "Unternehmensforschung" (translates into "enterprise research") and "Unternehmungsforschung" (translates into "undertaking research"). I would not be surprised if none of these German words and their translation into English is to your liking. They certainly were not convincing to many of us.

So "operations research" became the word of choice within the German-speaking OR community. The Swiss OR Society calls itself "Schweizerische Vereinigung fuer Operations Research," the German OR Society is named "Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Operations Research" and the Austrian one is "Oesterreichische Gesellschaft fuer Operations Research." Even in those days when the friction within the German-speaking OR community was so intense that a rival OR society was founded, the name "operations research" remained in the title of the new society: "Gesellschaft für Mathematik, Oekonomie und Operations Research."

If that was the end of the story, it might have had a happy ending. Alas, it is not. Unlike other English terms like computer, Internet and biotech, "operations research" has not become a well-known German term. People do not know what this term really means. Explanation is nearly always needed or, if none is at hand, interpretations take place with unintentional consequences. It gradually became clear that in the German-speaking environment, it is not so much the misinterpretation of "operations" that creates difficulties for OR but rather the misinterpretation of "research."

In English, "research" is used in broad terms to include such activities as analysis, assessment, exploration and inquiry. The German term "Forschung" is used in a quite confined way describing the sum of activities primarily done at research institutions. So, creating an OR department in a company is tricky because it means creating another "research" department outside the R&D department. Doing business as a consultant with expertise in OR is even trickier, because consultants are meant to be consultants and not researchers. If this sounds confusing, try convincing a German-speaking fellow who has never heard of OR that even though you are doing "operations research," you are not a researcher, your work is not necessarily theoretical and you do not intend to publish the results.

Subtle misinterpretations can lead to big problems. OR departments in companies based in German-speaking countries have become rare. Consulting companies selling OR as their core competency are close to extinction. OR in the German-speaking countries has become a discipline confined to research institutions, primarily universities.

It would be a very enlightening social experiment within the German-speaking environment if "operations research" would be replaced by a term subject to less misinterpretation. Immediate consequences cannot be expected. But in the long run? What path of development would OR as a discipline take in the German-speaking countries if "research" would be replaced by "engineering," "technology" or "analysis"? Certainly, none of these terms suggest in their German translation that this is a discipline confined to universities. And none of these terms suggest that its prime goal is to enhance theory. What would OR look like in the German-speaking countries in, say, 20 years, if "operations" would be replaced by "decision" - a term with a clear meaning even in its German-language counterpart?

Of course, as George Orwell described very plausibly in his famous book "1984," powerful groups can gradually change the meaning of a word - newspeak at work. But it is hard to believe that the German-speaking OR community can change the meaning of "operations research" to what "operations research" really means. So, even though it sounds paradoxical, to communicate the meaning of operations research to outsiders may require us to replace the term with something that travels well in different languages. "Decision engineering" or "decision technology" seems to me like a good place to start.

Christoph Mandl (christoph.mandl@univie.ac.at) is president of Mandl, Luethi & Partner, a consulting company in Vienna, Austria. He is also a Senior Lecturer at the Vienna University School of Business and a member of the Austrian Society for Operations Research.

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