The practice of operations research and the role of practice and practitioners in INFORMS

Effective practice involves the interplay of technical knowledge, organizational knowledge, and interpersonal skills. This mix of skills plus the business imperatives and social structure of practice creates problems for the role of practice in INFORMS. Mapping the skills and knowledge required for practice and the competencies in INFORMS as a professional society provides a structure for understanding how practice fits into INFORMS and how to resolve some of the issues in providing a proper role for INFORMS in making a community for practitioners. The same structure also illustrates what is different about teaching operations research in business schools versus engineering schools or mathematics departments. Although we work in a technical area, we need to understand the sociology and market structure of practice, major elements in developing a theory of practice.