The management of OR groups: results of a survey

Abstract

This paper presents the results of a survey of OR group managers to examine the success and survival of OR groups in UK industry, commerce and the public sector, which was sponsored by the OR Society. The aims of the survey were threefold: to gain some understanding of the demographics of UK OR groups in the mid-1990s as compared to the evidence collected 10 years earlier by the Commission; secondly, to establish how OR groups work, the type of projects they carry out, the clients they work for and the organisations they work in; and finally, to gain an understanding of how OR groups are managed, including the factors that OR managers believed to be important in ensuring their group's continuing success. In a nutshell, this paper presents a snap shot of OR group management in the mid-1990s.