Integrated operations: A proposal for operations management teaching and research

Abstract

This paper, addressed to professors of operations management (OM) in research institutions, suggests that the long-term academic viability of our discipline requires the generation of a theory uniquely associated with the practice of OM. Such a theory will rest on foundations laid by other disciplines, but must find its own unique synthesis that attends to the problems of OM practice. The paper proposes a framework that recognizes physics, social psychology and philosophy as foundational disciplines for an integrative theory of OM and suggests which concepts from those disciplines may find voice in such a theory.