Pom Forum: Operations Management's Next Source of Galvanizing Energy?

I am concerned that the field of production and operations management is losing direction and cohesion, as well as the battle for the best new faculty, student enrollments, and research funding. This problem is not due to a lack of interesting initiatives but because our several active subfields are pulling us in different directions and causing our common ground to shrink. This is at a time when firms around the globe are facing perplexing operating problems that are apparently not resolvable through existing theories and techniques. Other academic fields have experienced similar strains at certain points, and they tend to get to that point following a progression like those that production and operations management has witnessed three times in the past 50 years. After briefly describing these past histories, I propose that we are near the end of one cycle and need a new jolt of energy to begin another. The problems of coordinating the complex collaborations among networked organizations (the Coordination of Operations across Multiple Organizations) are becoming increasingly important in today's economy. I suggest that intensive multiteam studies of such networks could provide new insights into these pressing problems, stimulate creativity, and help reunify our field.