Between two stools: A possible future for operational research

Operational Research has been balancing precariously between two roles and their accompanying images. One is as a science producing results which aspire to the true for all time and independent of time, place and researcher. The other is as a practically useful subject, indispensable for the management of large organisations. Those operational researchers who stand firmly on one of these platforms commonly dismiss the efforts of those who take the opposite stance. Paradoxically, neither group fully receives the respect it seeks from its reference community – of scientists and managers respectively. The paper will suggest that there is a possible third position, separate from those of the ‘natural scientists’ and the ‘management scientists’. This is as a form of analytic practice which engages more broadly with the contested issues which confront society. Because they are contested there is no unique representation for mathematical manipulation, and no unitary management whose interests are to be pursued. It is the resolution of these issues which provides the ‘givens’ for conventional operational research studies. This alternative practice raises demanding questions – how analysis can engage with social interaction; what role ethical considerations should play in our practice. These are questions which operational research has avoided for too long.