The Total Organisation System (TOS) Why Operational Research and The Social Sciences Cannot Match

Abstract

A quarter century after the first Cambridge Conference on Operational Research and the Social Sciences, i feel that it is high time to summarize the mutual contribution between these two areas. In this paper OR are the quantitative sciences and tools, while SS (the Social Sciences) represents the qualitative approach or what we would like to refer to as real life.

The area of SS relevant to our theme is that of the actual dynamics of organization and management, represented by the so-called Total Organizational System (TOS) described in the first part of the paper. This part includes a discussion of why the TOS cannot benefit from any contributions of OR. Obviously the SS do derive from the quantitative sciences statistical testing tools for verification of findings based on large numbers of data (or such statistical applications as quality control testing), as well as the obvious utilization of electronic data processing (EDP).

The second part of the paper considers the question why OR has, on the one hand, only contributed marginally to and could never match the SS and on the other hand, has developed and expanded over the last 25 years inspite of the halo of mathematical (and simplistic!) solutions. The relative ease with which mathematically oriented publications could be evaluated by scientists from different disciplines for the purpose of nominating, promoting, tenuring faculty members is discussed.

The last part of the paper presents a few examples of the harm done by OR to the healthy and prosperous development of SS. I subsequently describe the damage that OR in its wider sense has caused Israel, especially in the areas of management and public health