Operations Management's Next Source of Galvanizing Energy?

Production and Operations Management, Nov/Dec 2008 by Hayes, Robert H

I am concerned that the field of production and operations management is losing direction and cohesion, as well as the battle for the best new faculty, student enrollments, and research funding. This problem is not due to a lack of interesting initiatives but because our several active subfields are pulling us in different directions and causing our common ground to shrink. This is at a time when firms around the globe are facing perplexing operating problems that are apparently not resolvable through existing theories and techniques.

Other academic fields have experienced similar strains at certain points, and they tend to get to that point following a progression like those that production and operations management has witnessed three times in the past 50 years. After briefly describing these past histories, I propose that we are near the end of one cycle and need a new jolt of energy to begin another.

The problems of coordinating the complex collaborations among networked organizations (the Coordination of Operations across Multiple Organizations) are becoming increasingly important in today's economy. I suggest that intensive multiteam studies of such networks could provide new insights into these pressing problems, stimulate creativity, and help reunify our field.

Key words: POM; rejuvenation; reunification; networks; research

History: Received: October 2006; Revised: January 2008; Accepted: February 2008 by Kalyan Singhal.

1. The Creative Cycle

Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? is the title of a famous painting by Paul Gauguin. His attempt to wrestle with those questions on canvas is less interesting to us here than the title itself. It poses questions that every person- and every field of inquiry-ought to be asking itself periodically.

Such questions are particularly pertinent for our field of operations management today, because it is my sense (as well as that of others) that it is losing cohesiveness and coherent direction. It is not that our field is inactive-in fact, it supports several highly active subfields, but these pull us in different directions and are causing our common ground to shrink. The situation we find ourselves in today is not unique; most academic fields experience similar strains at certain points, during which they are forced to ask themselves "what are we, and where are we going?" They tend to get to that point following a progression much like those we have witnessed in our own field at least three times in the past 50 years.

An intellectual discipline often goes through a recurring creative cycle (somewhat similar to the concept of "punctuated equilibrium" in evolutionary biology) that typically progresses through four rough phases. After a period of relative stasis, it (1) experiences a jolt of galvanizing energy, triggered by the discovery of a new field of inquiry, a novel conceptual framework or methodology (often adapted from another academic discipline), or a dramatic change in the field's external context that undercuts the assumptions underlying existing theories; this is followed by (2) a burst of creativity as this new field or framework is explored, elaborated, and argued about; after which there is (3) a long period of consolidation and refinement; ending in (4) quasi stagnation, as the discipline awaits a new energy source.

Powerful jolts of new energy can have the ability to shape and redirect a whole field of intellectual inquiry. For this to happen they must offer novel and provocative insights about familiar problems and/or contradict the field's "conventional wisdom," thus revealing and providing access to stimulating new domains of inquiry, and have broad applicability to existing subfields (as well as to practice). These subgroups will then, in their individual pursuit of the new ideas, find their efforts overlapping and thereby be drawn closer together. If a field is to sustain a leading position over other disciplines in exploring and developing the new ideas, of course, they need to build on its existing sources of comparative advantage.

2. The Creative Cycle at Work in Operations Management

2.1. The Operations Research Revolution

Our field of production and operations management (P/OM) experienced such a jolt of galvanizing energy 50 years ago, as the approach and tools of operations research intruded on its then-accepted domain-a comfortable combination of industrial engineering and factory management. The idea that such familiar problems as resource allocation, work scheduling, project management, and inventory control could be formulated so as to reveal their underlying mathematical structures, enabling them to be addressed using existing (or new) methods of analysis, provided an intriguing alternative to existing frameworks and methodologies. This made it possible to find optimal solutions to such problems rather than just the "good" solutions that had been available previously. It also revealed similarities in the underlying mathematical structures of many problems that up to then had been regarded as separate- such as product mix, lot scheduling, and warehouse location decisions. Similarly, the dynamic behavior of the interactions within industrial supply chains had much in common with that of electrical networks.