CHALLENGING MANAGERIAL DILEMMAS OF OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT

In recent decades, business conditions have changed dramatically. In the global competitive environment, enterprises as business systems (BSs) can survive in the long term by permanently improving their business. Usually, BSs have limited resources and they face hard conditions; but they can significantly improve their business results if they manage their business operations better. The new challenges require a thorough innovation of management in general, including operations management (OM) as management of their own business operations. Generally, we can define OM as a synergetic entity of the design, operations, and improvement of the internal and external organizational, technical, informational, resources, and other systems that create product and service combinations in any type of enterprise. But in theory and business practice, we can find different approaches to research on OM and different definitions of OM. Therefore, the main interest-based and science-based dilemmas of modern OM include the questions of how to more holistically define OM and how to more holistically understand different definitions of OM. We see a possible solution to these dilemmas in a requisitely holistic consideration of the simultaneous existence of different understanding of OM for different purposes.