The genealogy of operations management

The authors investigate, through a mail survey, the rejuvenation of the field of operations management since the late 1950s, They use two primary measures in the present study: the trends in dissertation topics and the productivity of doctoral advisors and their students. Scheduling, process design, and inventory control have been the most popular dissertation topics. Aggregate planning, forecasting, location and layout, maintenance, interdisciplinary, and project management have remained relatively constant in popularity over the decades. Strategy, distribution, and process design are growing in popularity, while OR/MS is decreasing. Work measurement, finance/economics, and marketing appear to have virtually ended. The most dominant current research interest (as distinct from dissertation topics) is process design, with significant growth in interest in the categories of strategy, quality, and service operations. Analysis of the productivity of doctoral advisors indicates that the field is growing at a slow but steady rate. In general, the field has been increasing its yearly production of graduates at the rate of a little less than one graduate per year since 1960. Looking at individual advisors, productivity grows relatively steadily until about the time of the second sabbatical, whereupon it takes a drastic drop. Thereafter, it resurges, but to a lower rate, and then slowly tapers off. Fifty-eight percent of the respondents have had no direct doctoral students, for a variety of reasons. Of the rest, most have had just one student, but one advisor (Gene Groff) has had as many as 21. In terms of total descendants, the range is none up to 47 (Jack Muth). Ten advisors account for almost half of all the doctorates in the field, while another ten (with a large overlap) have had from two to four levels of descendants. These chains of descendants are illustrated in the paper. Overall, it appears that a dozen or so individuals have largely shaped the field in terms of doctoral production, one measure of contribution to the evolution of the field. Based on the careers of these individuals, it seesm that major productivity changes tend to occur around sabbatical years. Also, about one-fourth of an advisor’s students go on to produce students themselves. However, in spite of the large variability in individual advisor productivity, as well as falloffs and resurgences in productivity over the course of individuals’ careers, the cumulative growth of the field has almost perfectly followed a quadratic curve.