Beyond internal OR groups

The paper reviews the prospects of OR applied by dispersed practitioners, small providers of OR services, academics and OR consultants, in other words OR applied by those not located inside internal OR groups. Many in the UK have regarded the activities of OR groups as the defining practice of our profession. The Survival and Success of OR Groups study indicates that within a fairly stable population of OR practitioners the number of internal OR groups is in decline while the number of external, consulting groups is growing. There are good reasons in terms of the diffusion of innovation for assuming that this trend will continue. Against that possibility, the OR profession in the UK needs to reassess the defining aspects of OR and the implications for the activities of the profession in the future. Using the language of strategy, the profession needs to identify its core competencies, define how they are distinctive, consider how they can be developed and maintained, and determine through which channels they can be delivered. One of the key battlegrounds is within the management consultancies where the competing approaches of management science and organisational development vie for supremacy.