April 1997 € Volume 24 € Number 2

Pursuing the Wrong Objectives

The problem with OR/MS isn't the name, it's ignoring our prospective consumers and clients

By John C. Papageorgiou

I read, with interest, Alan Gepfert's letter to the editor in the December 1996 issue of OR/MS Today regarding the impact of the label of OR and/or MS on the acceptance problem faced by our profession. It is a fact that we have not been as successful as we could have been in having our profession as recognized as, for example, MIS, marketing, etc., despite our powerful approaches to solving decision problems.

Incidentally, I don't think the disbanding of OR departments in industry and dispersion of OR practitioners to other departments is per se a bad indicator, as Gepfert implies. It would be ideal if we could have a situation where every person in every department is proficient with OR/MS. I agree with Gepfert that we have failed to sell our discipline to industry, but I don't think that the name is to blame. Even if it was, it is already established, and it cannot be changed.

Gary Lilien ("Trouble in River City," OR/MS Today, June 1994, p. 6) very successfully quotes the famous philosopher Pogo with respect for who is to be blamed: "We have met the enemy and they is us!"

In my view, as I explain in more detail in my article: "Are We Promoting OR/MS to Our Future Clients?" (International Journal of Quantitative and Operations Management, forthcoming), we have ignored the fact that business students are our prospective consumers and clients, as the managers of tomorrow, and we have done our best to turn them away from our discipline. As Peter Bell states (in P.R Horner's, "Money Talks: The Case for Teaching MS/OR Case Studies in Business Schools", OR/MS Today, October 1995, pp. 30-33): "Those of us teaching in business schools are really the marketing front line for management science and operations research. ... If we can't persuade our business graduates that MS/OR has value to corporations, then the battle is over and MS/OR is done."

Unfortunately, for decades we have pursued the wrong objectives through introductory OR/MS courses in business schools. We want to improve the students' quantitative skills and teach them the OR/MS techniques so that they will be able to apply them in solving simple real-life problems; yet we complain that graduates from OR/MS programs are considered not ready to practice OR/MS (1992-93 TIMS/ORSA Joint Education Committee, "Suggestions for an MS/OR Master's Degree Curriculum," OR/MS Today, February 1993).

As a result, every introductory textbook for use in business schools was -- and still is -- technique-oriented with standard coverage of the different aspects of linear programming (formulation, sensitivity analysis, transportation algorithm, assignment problem, other mathematical programming models, etc.) We, as teachers, having most likely come out of technical programs and with little, if any, experience in the real world, found it more convenient to teach the technicalities of the OR/MS approaches rather than their usefulness.

In a vicious circle, the teachers followed these textbooks in designing their course syllabi, and the authors followed the standard syllabus to write their textbooks. Given the business students' lack of mathematical background and aptitude necessary to understand the technical aspects of the OR/MS approaches and appreciate their possibilities, our introductory courses were, and are, a perfect way to make the students develop an unfavorable attitude towards OR/MS.

In my view, we are still technique-oriented as long as we structure and teach OR/MS business courses by technique (linear programming, queueing, etc.) rather than by problem area (production, marketing, finance, service industry, health, environment, education, etc.) where solutions to already-formulated problems -- derived by the computer -- are discussed in the class, "what if" questions are answered and implementation issues are raised. The business students, i.e. tomorrow's managers, neither need nor will they ever be able to do OR/MS modeling, and they do not need to understand the technicalities behind the OR/MS approaches.

What they need is to see the potential of OR/MS in contributing to the solution of different problems from different problem areas and environments. Can we succeed to hearing a "wow" rather than an "ouch" after each class from every business student? It is only then that we will have succeeded in promoting OR/MS to our future consumers and clients. The name of our discipline will not be that important.

It is fortunate that we have become aware of the educational problem we have, and several people have raised the red flag through articles in OR/MS Today and elsewhere, and through sessions at our meetings.

I have organized an invited panel session on "Teaching OR/MS to Business Students, Our Future Clients" for the upcoming EURO/lNFORMS meeting in Barcelona (July 14-17), and I hope that those who will attend the meeting will come to contribute to the discussion. The responsibility for the future success of our profession lies with both those who teach business students and those who teach the future teachers of business students.

John C. Papageorgiou is a professor of Management Science in the Department of Management Science and Information Systems, University of Massachusetts-Boston.

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