Operations management : dancing the tightrope between physics and economics

Operations Management is young as a science, somewhat older as a profession. Likewise economics it draws from both mathematics and behavioral sciences in order to understand phenomena as observed in real-life. Likewise physics, it models processes in order to understand measurable phenomena. Likewise the engineering sciences, it uses mathematical modeling to construct artifacts that should contribute to the welfare and well-being of mankind.
In the last decade Operations Management research seems to resemble more and more research in economics. Stylized models are developed to study supply chain coordination, capital investments in flexibility, etc. Experiments are setup to study the impact of human behavior on decision making relevant to operations. Empirical research leads to hypothesis formulation and testing. Criticism on this type of research relates to distance between the stylized models studied and the real-life complexity they are said to represent.
In parallel information technology makes information available that enables implementation of decision support systems based on concepts, models and analysis developed in the OM and OR field over the last 50 years. This seems to call for a renewed interest in the structurally complex problems that emerge when making strategic, tactical and operational intra- and intercompany decisions. Research in this direction could benefit from the physics research tradition and the engineering research that builds on this: decision support systems should “work”, i.e. should generate decisions that can be verified and validated (to some extent). Criticism on this type of research relates to the specificity of real-life problems studied, which makes one wonder is the research is truly scientific.
In this presentation we intend to provide structure to the above considerations by proposing an OM modeling typology. This modeling typology is strongly related to the objectives of OM research. By being clear about the research objectives we should be able to see the contributions of various research paradigms. This allows us to address the above-mentioned criticism on the different OM research paradigms. We use some OM research topics that have received consistent research attention over the last fifty years to illustrate our reasoning.