{"title":"Mathematical Management – Operations Research in the United States and Western Europe, 1945 – 1990","authors":"R. Vahrenkamp","doi":"10.5771/0935-9915-2023-1-69","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"The rise of Operations Research, which provides mathematical models for the management of commercial enterprises, in the political knowledge culture of Cold War Science is shown and then transferred to the institutionalization of Operations Research in Europe and in the Federal Republic of Germany. The predecessor organizations of the German Society for Operations Research are presented and the interaction of the annual conference of this society with the conferences on a European and worldwide level. It tells how numerous chairs for corporate research and operations research were founded at universities between 1960 and 1980. The connection between Operations Research and the macroeconomic field of econometrics in chairs, conferences and publications is explained and problematized. The great flood of publications on the subject of Operations Research between 1960 and 1980 is referred to, but the rise of the competing field of business informatics in the 1980s halted the success of Operations Research. Based on the historical study by Alexander Nützenadel, the difference between the field of econometrics, which is based on empirical data, and the field of operations research, which is more academically oriented, is worked out. The methodological approach of Operations Research is referred to as abstractification. An example for abstractification is the transport model of linear optimization, which simplifies (abstractifies) economic reality to such an extent that it can be transformed into manageable formulas. However, the transport model is unsuitable for applications in the real economy and thus serves only as a self-referential project for the academic sector. This contribution shows that Operations Research lacks the level of empirical implementation of mathematical models known from econometrics and the social sciences. How transport optimization was taken up in the political knowledge cultures of the Eastern bloc (1945 – 1990) and in the German Democratic Republic is dealt with in a section.","PeriodicalId":47269,"journal":{"name":"Management Revue","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":7.6000,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Management Revue","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.5771/0935-9915-2023-1-69","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"MANAGEMENT","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The rise of Operations Research, which provides mathematical models for the management of commercial enterprises, in the political knowledge culture of Cold War Science is shown and then transferred to the institutionalization of Operations Research in Europe and in the Federal Republic of Germany. The predecessor organizations of the German Society for Operations Research are presented and the interaction of the annual conference of this society with the conferences on a European and worldwide level. It tells how numerous chairs for corporate research and operations research were founded at universities between 1960 and 1980. The connection between Operations Research and the macroeconomic field of econometrics in chairs, conferences and publications is explained and problematized. The great flood of publications on the subject of Operations Research between 1960 and 1980 is referred to, but the rise of the competing field of business informatics in the 1980s halted the success of Operations Research. Based on the historical study by Alexander Nützenadel, the difference between the field of econometrics, which is based on empirical data, and the field of operations research, which is more academically oriented, is worked out. The methodological approach of Operations Research is referred to as abstractification. An example for abstractification is the transport model of linear optimization, which simplifies (abstractifies) economic reality to such an extent that it can be transformed into manageable formulas. However, the transport model is unsuitable for applications in the real economy and thus serves only as a self-referential project for the academic sector. This contribution shows that Operations Research lacks the level of empirical implementation of mathematical models known from econometrics and the social sciences. How transport optimization was taken up in the political knowledge cultures of the Eastern bloc (1945 – 1990) and in the German Democratic Republic is dealt with in a section.
期刊介绍:
Management Revue - Socio-Economic Studies is an interdisciplinary European journal that undergoes peer review. It publishes qualitative and quantitative work, along with purely theoretical papers, contributing to the study of management, organization, and industrial relations. The journal welcomes contributions from various disciplines, including business and public administration, organizational behavior, economics, sociology, and psychology. Regular features include reviews of books relevant to management and organization studies.
Special issues provide a unique perspective on specific research fields. Organized by selected guest editors, each special issue includes at least two overview articles from leaders in the field, along with at least three new empirical papers and up to ten book reviews related to the topic.
The journal aims to offer in-depth insights into selected research topics, presenting potentially controversial perspectives, new theoretical insights, valuable empirical analysis, and brief reviews of key publications. Its objective is to establish Management Revue - Socio-Economic Studies as a top-quality symposium journal for the international academic community.