June 1997 • Volume 24 • Number 3
Positioning the OR/MS Core Course
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By Peter Bell The business school marketplace is highly competitive and becoming more so; the major schools are all competing for the same excellent domestic and foreign students, and for the attentions of the same groups of prestigious recruiters and major donors. Schools "position" their programs to differentiate them from the competition and so present a distinctive image into the marketplace; Chicago's MBA program is very different from Harvard's.
The position a school adopts determines the appropriate content and pedagogy for its programs. OR/MS will only survive as an integral part of the business school curriculum if both the content of the courses and their delivery are closely aligned with the positioning of the host school.
Program Positions
The position a business program occupies can be identified by examining a number of dimensions including the following (which are not orthogonal):
"General Management" versus "Functionally Oriented": General management programs take a broad strategic focus without specializations and aim to produce "managers." Functional programs take a functional focus with concentrations and educate students for careers as "staff."
"Theoretical" versus "Practical": Students in theoretical programs read the research literature, understand developing and testing hypotheses, and talk about management. At practical schools, students read the business literature, learn about industries and corporations, and emphasize implementation and execution.
"Content" versus "Skills": Content-based programs emphasize "learning," are academic and scholarly, and try to teach a body of knowledge about management. Skills-oriented schools see management education as "training" and emphasize activities such as report-writing, making presentations and teamwork.
"Analysis" versus "Decision": An analysis orientation emphasizes performing analysis and arriving at correct solutions, which tends to have a narrow focus. A decision orientation emphasizes making sensible decisions in the face of complexity and solving real problems, which generally involves integration.
"Traditional Business" versus "Global Competition": Traditional business schools are people and marketing oriented, tend to be domestically focused, and are interested in topics such as entrepreneurism and creativity. Programs positioned toward global competition are profit-oriented, technologically advanced and stress the international arena.
Importantly, there are no "good" or "bad" positions even though individuals, particularly faculty, will fight hard for positions which match their personal strengths and interests. Program positions are not dictated from on high, but emerge as a result of competitive pressures and faculty politics.
Finally, program positions are not static but evolve over time as schools react to both internal and external pressures. In the last few years, market forces have pushed many schools into changing the positions of their MBA programs; programs appear to be moving away from theoretical, content, analysis and traditional business toward practical, skills, decision and global competition. This positional drift has important implications for the teaching of OR/MS.
The Teaching of OR/MS
Traditionally, teaching OR/MS has been theoretical, content, analysis and traditional business; positions from which many MBA programs are now moving away.
OR/MS courses must evolve with their host programs so that we continue to support the positioning of our schools. If we fail to do this, we will be seen as irrelevant and will not survive. We are fortunate to have a wealth of material and pedagogy from which to draw from that can support any type of business program.
In general management programs, future "users" of OR/MS can learn how OR/MS can help the firm compete, and how firms like Sainsbury's have found OR/MS to be really useful in helping the kinds of executives they hope to become. In functional programs we may have our own major where we can educate the OR/MS practitioners of the future. If not, we can teach how OR/MS is being used in marketing, finance, information systems and production.
In theoretical programs we can teach optimization algorithms and queuing theory, while in practical programs we can introduce our students to Sabre Decision Technologies, Federal Express and Pritsker.
In content-oriented programs we can teach how to set up and test hypotheses, and discuss the differences between LP, IP, MIP and NLP; while when skills are emphasized we can teach collecting and analyzing data; forecasting; building useful models; and using spreadsheets and solvers. We can further support skills development by having students make presentations and write reports, and by conducting case discussions in small groups and large classes.
In analysis-oriented programs we can teach formulating the correct problem, doing a "good" analysis, and arriving at an optimum solution. In decision-oriented programs we can introduce real-world decision making which begins when the analysis has been completed and the results are understood.
In traditional business programs we can teach the use of LP in oil refineries and simulation in manufacturing. In globally-oriented programs we can show the effectiveness of OR/MS as a competitive weapon; can talk about Harris Semiconductor, San Miguel and Sadia; and can showcase OR/MS as a critical component of information technology.
By lecturing we can support content, theory and analysis, while the use of cases, modeling workshops or projects can support practical, skills and decision-oriented programs.
Conclusion
We are faced with a paradox: OR/MS has never been more important to the firm than it is today, yet many business schools are questioning the presence of OR/MS in their program core.
As market pressures force business programs to reposition, we must be sure that our OR/MS teaching follows, and that we are seen as supporting the positions adopted by our host institutions.
Peter Bell is a professor at the Richard Ivey School Of Business , University of Western Ontario.
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OR/MS Today copyright © 1997, 1998 by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences. All rights reserved.
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