Questioning the history of operational research in order to prepare its future

Denis Bouyssou (1)

1 LAMSADE - Laboratoire d'analyse et modélisation de systèmes pour l'aide à la décision

The historical development of Operational Research (OR) is traditionally seen as the succession of three distinct phases: the “heroic times” of the Second World War, the “Golden Age” between the fifties and the sixties during which major theoretical achievements were accompanied by a widespread diffusion of OR techniques in private and public organisations, a “crisis” followed by a “decline” starting with the late sixties, a phase during which OR groups in firms progressively disappeared while academia became less and less concerned with the applicability of the techniques developed. This paper questions this view of the history of OR. We outline a different path to analyse the history of OR that may be useful to prepare its future.

Mots clés: History of OR; methodology; future of OR.; future of OR

Denis Bouyssou. Questioning the history of operational research in order to prepare its future. 2005. ⟨hal-00003924⟩