Is production and operations management a discipline? A citation/co‐citation study

Abstract

For the past 20 years, the field of production and operations management (POM) has tried to establish itself as a discipline distinct from operations research (OR), management science (MS) and industrial engineering (IE). Sceptics argue that POM has failed to develop its own body of literature, lacks a distinct intellectual structure and that there is little appreciation of what it stands for. In this paper we use bibliometric techniques (a factor analysis of co‐citations) to investigate the intellectual pillars of the POM literature and explore whether these are distinct from those commonly associated with its rival fields. We also use simple non‐parametric techniques to show that the research agenda of European POM scholars differs substantially from that of their North American counterparts, and argue that such transatlantic differences may have exacerbated the difficulties POM has experienced in developing as a respected academic discipline.