OR practice: Survey results and reflections of practising INFORMS members

In the 1970s, several articles, mostly expressing views of Operational Research pioneers and academicians appeared discussing the state of OR practice. Motivated by the current developments and advances in computing and information technologies, this paper extends these works by directly surveying the practising population of INFORMS to obtain opinions about the state of OR practice today, and the implications for the future. Additionally, in order to better assess the state of OR practice, interviews were held with a sample of successful practitioners to obtain further input on the results of the survey. Despite some problems, most of the practising community seems to agree that the practice of operational research is still growing. In obtained responses, the community emphasised the importance of communication skills and the need for more integration between information technology and operational research methods in order for OR to achieve its real potential.