Letters to the Editor
Branding O.R. in Europe
To the Editor:
I was positively impressed by the INFORMS announcement about the "branding O.R." campaign in the United States. Not surprisingly, EURO, the European Association of O.R. Societies, federating 29 national societies and around 10,000 operational researchers in Europe, is also starting to work on "Branding O.R." in Europe.
Operational research in Europe has a strong background and a long tradition, but, as others experienced, is lacking the necessary visibility to the external world and is suffering from being confused with other disciplines and practices. Just to mention an example, the term O.R. is present within the keywords of the European Commission Research Directorate, but only as a sub-branch of applied mathematics. There is no link to computer science, economics or engineering, and other relevant keywords such as "management science" or "decision analysis" simply do not exist.
There are some typical European features in talking about operational research in Europe:
- There are more than 20 different official languages (within which the term O.R. is even less expressive than in English), and despite the use of English as a common scientific language, national communities and societies are strongly attached to their identities.
- There are big differences among the training systems and the practices in conducting business and consulting. There is, of course, a positive trend in overcoming such differences, but the European Union is more a perspective than a reality.
However, the increasing dimension of the European job market for intellectual professions, the establishment of European standards in training and educational programs, as well as the strength of the European research funding system, oblige us to consider our promotional campaign to an European level.
What is EURO doing? For the moment we are preparing our campaign. There is a dedicated page within the EURO Web site: www.euro-online.org/display.php?page=branding_or. A task force composed of Valerie Belton (United Kingdom), Rainer Burkard (Austria), Eric Jacquet-Lagrèze (France), Jo van Nunen (Netherlands), Roman Slowinski (Poland), Paolo Toth (Italy), Luk van Wassenhove (France) and Dominique de Werra (Switzerland), coordinated by myself, is working on preparing a number of documents aimed to support the EURO campaign.
Two principal axes are elaborated. The first emphasizes the specificity of O.R. with respect to other scientific fields and consulting activities (the scope being to increase awareness of those people who study and practice O.R. without using this term). The second attempts to show how O.R. is inside many of our everyday life activities, such as traveling, using a cell phone or drinking water (the scope being to show the importance of O.R. and increase awareness for the general public).
The term O.R. itself has not been really discussed. As I have already mentioned, the translation of O.R. in many of the European languages results in terms sometimes more difficult to explain than the original in English. Nevertheless, it is a term that thousands of colleagues identify themselves with, and it is a term with which almost 60 years of history are associated. Instead, we consider it important to show that terms such as "management science," "decision analysis," "decision sciences," etc. are synonyms.
In January 2005, EURO will celebrate its 30-year anniversary. It was established on Jan. 29, 1975 in Brussels by representatives of 11 societies: Belgium, Germany, Finland, France, Greece, Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. We hope to be able to make our first public presentation of our campaign on such an occasion.
In its 60-year history, operational research has been able to provide great services to our communities and societies, but we can do better:
"The most beautiful sea ... hasn't been crossed yet.
"The most beautiful child ... hasn't grown up yet.
"Our most beautiful days ... we haven't seen yet.
"And the most beautiful words I wanted to tell you ...
"I haven't said yet."
— Nazim Hikmet, "Poemes of Nazim Hikmet," Persea Books
Alexis Tsoukiès
Paris, France
Alexis Tsoukiès is president-elect of EURO.
A Name That Fits the Work We Do
To the Editor:
I am a little disappointed with the decision to name our profession O.R. and to describe it as "Science of Better." While this may be attractive to members of the profession, I cannot feel it will cut much ice with the community we wish to serve.
With doctorates in economics and mathematical statistics, I experienced firsthand during World War II the remarkable contributions of "pure intellect" to the conduct of the war. I was therefore delighted to join the Operations Research Society and later the Institute for Management Science as soon as they were formed.
In the 1930s, economists, whose profession was little known and respected, had a similar problem to ours in defining "economic science." It was finally defined as "the science of allocating limited resources to satisfy unlimited ends." I am sure that this definition greatly helped promote and increase the respect for economics throughout business, commerce and government in the decades following to achieve its present high standing.
I think if we are to really succeed in our quest to gain more recognition, we should think of describing the profession and its practice in words that are "marketing"-oriented. To this end, I think we should call the profession "Operations Research Science" and define the work of an operations research scientist as practicing "the science of applying available resources to achieve optimum satisfaction of a specific desired objective," a description that I think fits most of the work we do.
Herbert W. Robinson
Fountain Hills, Ariz.
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