Multiple Perspectives: Overcoming the Weaknesses of MS/OR.

This article discusses issues related to overcoming the weaknesses of management science/operations research (MS/OR). MS/OR began as "scientific management" with researcher Frederick Taylor in 1911 and gathered steam with World War II's operations research. Searching for submarines and vectoring of interceptor aircraft were aided by mathematical analysis. Management scientists developed game theory, decision analysis and forecasting tools. The flowering of Camelot-on-the-Potomac brought systems analysis to Washington with cost-effectiveness analysis and the planning-programming-budgeting system. Nuclear war, for example, a U.S.-Soviet nuclear exchange, had earlier been cited as ideally suitable to systems analysis. It was seen as a "well-structured" system, and endless computer modeling and gaming have been based on that assumption. Organization theory has not provided me any framework to judge possible appointees. Augmenting the traditional data- and model-based mode of viewing a complex problem by adding perspectives based on other paradigms is both feasible and fruitful.