A prospective look at the OR system

The paper examines the long term problems of operational research through an analysis of OR as a system. The general environment will change as a result of the transformations occurring within the developed societies and of the mutations in the North-South relations; the interaction between OR, mass media and public opinion will be influenced by the emerging ideologies; the naive conceptions of the division of labour between policy makers and OR specialists will have to be revised as OR studies will be more and more developed for governments through national administrations, international organizations or public opinions; the formulation of goals will no longer be separated from the search for institutions liable to elaborate suitable goals; the tendency towards a systems analysis inspired by general systems theory should be reinforced; and finally the OR people will have to rethink the relations between their applied studies, the central core of OR itself and the various social sciences. Time seems to have come for an epistemology and a prospective study of OR.