I think the field of OR has reached such a level of maturity in the development of modelling methods that we now should also pay attention to behavioural factors affecting model-based problem solving and decision making processes. Recently, the term
Behavioural Operational Research (BOR) has been proposed to capture this new development and signal the emergence of an important field of future activity within OR . Defined broadly, BOR relates to the behavioural aspects of the use of OR in problem solving and decision support. The overall purpose of BOR is to make better use of OR by both experts and users, so that the intended benefits of OR are effectively realized in practice. Although behavioural issues have been acknowledged and studied by particular OR communities (e.g. decision analysis, operations management, system dynamics, game theory), much more behavioural studies and understanding are needed across the full spectrum of OR specialisms.Such needs are today explicitly stated in the Analytics community. We could reach out to work together on the OR practice by non-mathemticians too. Moreove, I think that many of us have already been doing such reseach but having an umbrella term will help promote this activity.
There will be a stream of sessions with about 30 papers in the forthcoming IFORS meeting in Barcelona in July,2014. There is also a Call for papers for a special issue of EJOR on the theme :
http://www.journals.elsevier.com/european-journal-of-operational-research/call-for-papers/call-for-papers-behavioural-or/ -------------------------------------------
Raimo P. Hamalainen
Professor
Aalto University School of Science
Finland
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