Operations Research Management Science - Cyberspace

<BODY bgcolor="#ffffff" link="cc0000" vlink="cc0000" text="#000000"> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=4 border=0><br>   <table border=0 cellspacing=0 cellpadding=0 width=480><tr valign=top> <td width=10><img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 hspace=4 border=0></td> <td width=470> <FONT face="verdana, arial, helvetica" SIZE=2><B><I><A HREF="../../ORMS.shtml" TARGET="_top">OR/MS Today</A> - August 2003</I></B></font><BR> <hr size="1"> <img src="cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=4 border=0><br> <font face="times new roman, times"> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=4 border=0><br> <FONT face="verdana, arial, helvetica" SIZE=2><B>Cyberspace</B></FONT><br> <IMG SRC="../barbluehook.gif" WIDTH="468" HEIGHT="4"><br> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=8 border=0><br> <FONT SIZE="+2"><B>Teaching OR/MS in Biz School</B></FONT><BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=6 border=0><br> <FONT face="verdana, arial, helvetica" SIZE=2><B>By ManMohan S. Sodhi</B></FONT><br> <hr size="1"> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=12 border=0><br>    In the June issue of <I>OR/MS Today,</I> Tom Cook [1] and Pete Horner [2] focus on the revised MBA guidelines of the Association of Advanced Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB, <A HREF="http://www.aacsb.edu" TARGET="_new">www.aacsb.edu</A>). These now require the coverage of "statistical data analysis and management science" in MBA courses. Many thanks are owed to Kalyan Singhal and others. The AACSB has 884 member business schools, 656 in the United States and 228 outside of the United States, including at least one in countries ranging from Australia to the United Arab Emirates. This means that OR/MS has received a new lease on life in MBA curricula throughout the world. Below I outline three ideas to make OR/MS education more effective in the business school, which I will illustrate with my own efforts and that of Cass Business School. <P><B><I>1. Teach something topical.</I></B> The emphasis needs to be on applications. Cook [1] writes that "too many of us taught [OR/MS to business students] like the first courses we [OR/MS graduates] had taken, which in retrospect was really dumb." This would make OR/MS appear to be always searching for a subject that is the "flavor of the day"  supply chain management, e-business or even war  whatever was sexy at the moment. But the power of OR/MS modeling is that it can be applied to any business function or domain. <P>Consider, for example, the corps of business consultants who are a "product" of business schools. Their goal as consultants and therefore as MBA students is not to invent a new algorithm to solve the quadratic assignment problem, but to model a situation in a certain way to allow a standard solution method to solve this model in a spreadsheet environment. Next summer I will be offering a course, Modeling for Consultants, to teach different modeling techniques and solution methods. Different types of models for a course like this one include: 1) statistical models (e.g., regression), 2) optimization models (e.g., linear programming), 3) simulation and system dynamics models (e.g., the Beer Game), and 4) decision- and game-theoretic models. Which model is appropriate for what business situation and what to do with the output can be quite useful for would-be consultants. <P>An area that rests on OR/MS foundations and is of topical interest in the business world is risk management. Risk management as taught in business schools is usually associated with insurance or pension fund management, but a broader view could be taken. Risk could be that of earthquakes or even that of consumer demand going south unexpectedly in a supply chain. Defining risk and therefore risk management broadly is the direction our course at Cass is taking. How to understand risk, how to communicate it, and (hopefully) how to mitigate it is something OR/MS faculty can teach quite well. <P><B><I>2. Use the Internet to support your students.</I></B> This is hardly a radical idea but it is implemented much less than we realize. Maybe we all think that someone else is doing it. Students are accustomed to accessing the Web for help and would welcome a course Web site. It may seem onerous to develop Web sites for each course, but the effort involved is quite low, especially as word-processed documents and spreadsheets can be saved as HTML pages. You can put up class handouts and announcements on the Web for students to access at any time; if you don't want to share your course material with the rest of world, you need to figure out how to restrict access. Your school can also acquire sophisticated knowledge management tools  Cass is piloting one  for students to submit homework, to access course material, and to have online discussions with other students as well as the instructor. <P><B><I>3. Leverage "plagiarism."</I></B> A few months ago, in a bid to convince a skeptical British of the need to go to war with Iraq, Prime Minister Blair's office presented what it purported to be the findings of the intelligence services regarding the so-called "weapons of mass destruction." However, the report was plagiarized from a 12-year-old doctoral dissertation while being presented as current findings of the intelligence services. The foreign secretary and the prime minister's communications chief simply said this was an "embarassment" and moved on. Likewise, students  at least in the United Kingdom  when shown evidence of their plagiarism, simply apologize and there is no significant penalty. Perhaps with the Internet making so much information easily accessible, plagiarism is less of a stigma. There is an opportunity here to turn this lemon into lemonade. For example, we could give assignments that require students to find information on the Web for their reports while encouraging them to list references.<BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=12 border=0><br> <FONT face="verdana, arial, helvetica" SIZE=3><B>Conclusion</B></FONT><BR> <IMG SRC="../barbluehook.gif" WIDTH="468" HEIGHT="4"><br> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=2 border=0><br> We have a second chance but things are no longer the same. On one hand, MBA students have more experience and possibly less politeness compared to students in 1991 when the AASCB dropped OR/MS from its guidelines. These students will expect a strong business case for each of their courses. On the other hand, business needs are growing in sophistication and OR/MS is becoming even more useful. Let us not wait for a third chance.<BR> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=12 border=0><br> <FONT face="verdana, arial, helvetica" SIZE=3><B>References</B></FONT><BR> <IMG SRC="../barbluehook.gif" WIDTH="468" HEIGHT="4"><br> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=2 border=0><br> <OL> <font size=1> <LI> Cook, T., 2003, "Revised MBA Guidelines," <A HREF="../orms-6-03/frpres.html" TARGET="_top">President's Desk</A>, <I>OR/MS Today,</I> Vol 30, No. 3, p. 6. <LI> Horner, P., 2003, "A Second Bite at the Biz School Apple," <A HREF="../orms-6-03/frlastword.html" TARGET="_top">The Last Word</A>, <I>OR/MS Today,</I> Vol 30, No. 3, p. 72. </font> </OL> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=4 border=0><br> <IMG SRC="../barbluehook.gif" WIDTH="468" HEIGHT="4"><br> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=2 border=0><br> <FONT face="verdana, arial, helvetica" SIZE=2><I><B>Dr. ManMohan Sodhi</B> is a member of the operations management faculty at Cass Business School in London. He welcomes your comments at <A HREF="mailto:M.Sodhi@city.ac.uk">M.Sodhi@city.ac.uk</A>.</i><BR>  <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=5 border=0><br>  <img src="../barblue.gif" width=468 height=1 border=0 alt=" "><br> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=8 border=0><br> <font face="verdana, arial, helvetica" size="1"> <CENTER><script type="text/javascript"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js"> </script></CENTER><br> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=8 border=0><br> <LI> <A HREF="tocfr.html" Target="_top"><I>Table of Contents</A><br> <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=4 border=0><br> <LI> <A HREF="../../ORMS.shtml" TARGET="_top"><I>OR/MS Today</I> Home Page</A><br>  <img src="../cleardot.gif" width=1 height=1 vspace=8 border=0><br> <img src="../barblue.gif" width=468 height=1 border=0 alt=" "><br> <b><i>OR/MS Today</i></b> copyright © 2003 by <A HREF="http://www.informs.org/" target="_new">the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences</a>. 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