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Data-science algorithms and models changed the way we search for information on products and services, make payments, procure and trade, and along the way, changed how firms use individual-level consumer data, and how business transactions are created, documented, regulated, and analyzed. The emergence of data-intensive environments and algorithms also challenges management science research in many ways. It affects how knowledge is organized, produced, and assessed; how we search for answers to management questions, analyze information or validate insights and findings; and it challenges how we discover, design, describe, motivate, and replicate solutions. More importantly, it demands new theory to enable the development of models that exploit the type and volume of data available.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of Management Science. We take this opportunity to trace the history of the Marketing Department in Management Science, outline the role that the Marketing Department has played in supporting management science research in Marketing, its impact on the field, and its plans for the future.

This article provides a personal perspective on the themes and topics that have emerged in research published by the department of organizational behavior, in the first 50 years of Management Science. A review of articles accepted by the department suggests several themes that reflect broad objectives, such as “improving management science models,” or distinguishing points of view or assumptions, such as “treating organizations as decision-making entities.” The research is summarized through topics and subtopics that classify the subjects and findings of the research, identifying the relative popularity of the topics, and their contribution to each of the themes. The pattern suggests that as a “behavioral” department in a journal characterized by managerial practice, optimization, and the context of real work organizations, research is uniquely grounded in applications, solutions, and work consequences in ways that are less prevalent in typical outlets for behavioral research. The article concludes by suggesting that there are ample signs of convergence across departments in the journal. Scholars in organizational behavior increasingly recognize that the context provided by other management disciplines provides essential insights. Likewise, scholars in other management disciplines increasingly recognize the value of integrating behavioral theories and findings into their frameworks and models.

This article is a review of work published in Management Science on the topics of technological innovation, product development, and entrepreneurship since the inception of the journal in 1954. We intend the article to serve two goals. First, we hope that it will be useful to doctoral students and researchers interested in understanding what questions have been addressed in Management Science in the area of innovation. Second, we hope that the article will be useful to sociologists of science who are interested in understanding how knowledge develops in a field. We organize the literature into 12 themes. We then describe some aggregate properties of the articles. In an online supplement, we present brief summaries of the 250 articles we have identified as falling in the domain of our department.

As part of the 50th anniversary of Management Science, the journal is publishing articles that reflect on the past, present, and future of the various subfields the journal represents. In this article, we consider decision analysis research as it has appeared in Management Science. After reviewing the foundations of decision analysis and the history of the journal’s decision analysis department, we review a number of key developments in decision analysis research that have appeared in Management Science and offer some comments on the current state of the field.

This issue marks the start of the 50th volume of Management Science. As is customary on such “round number” occasions, we will be taking time for a bit of retrospective review and soul-searching speculation. We begin here with an overall assessment of the journal's performance relative to its original mission. In subsequent articles, which will appear in issues throughout Volume 50, we will take more detailed disciplinary looks at the past, present, and future of Management Science and the management subfields it represents.

This begins a two-part commentary on management science and e-business, the theme of this two-part special issue. After explaining the topical clusters that give organization to both parts, we pose two key questions concerning the impact of the emerging digital economy on management science research: What fundamentally new research questions arise, and what kind of research enables progress on them. We sketch the papers appearing in this part from the perspective of both these questions, and offer summary comments on the first question based on the papers in both parts. The principal conclusion is that the digital economy is giving birth to new research questions in three main ways (not all independent): by enabling and popularizing several types of technology-mediated interactions, by spawning large-scale digital data sources, and by creating recurring operational decisions that need to be automated.

This concludes a two-part commentary on management science and e-business, the theme of this two-part special issue. After reviewing the topical clusters that give organization to both parts, we sketch the papers appearing in this second part from the perspective of two key questions concerning the impact of the emerging digital economy on management science research: What fundamentally new research questions arise, and what kind of research enables progress on them. We then offer summary comments on the second question based on the papers in both parts. The principal conclusions are that, in meeting the challenges posed by the digital economy, management science researchers are (a) making greater use of parts of economics and computer science/information technology, and (b) exploiting the improving productivity advantages of empirical and methodological work in comparison with theoretical work.

While the goal of OR/MS is to aid decision makers, implementation of published models occurs less frequently than one might hope. However, one area that has been significantly impacted by management science is emergency response systems. Dozens of papers on emergency service management appeared in the OR/MS literature in the 1970s alone, many of which were published in Management Science. Three of these papers won major prizes. More importantly, many of these papers led to the implementation of substantially new policies and practices, particularly in policing and firefighting. Much of this work originated in New York City, though many other cities subsequently adopted the resulting models and strategies. In this paper, we look at the context, content, and nature of the research and the factors that led to these early implementation successes. We then track the extent to which these original models are still affecting decision making in emergency response systems. We also examine the pace of development of new OR/MS models and applications in the area. Finally, we look at issues in emergency responsiveness that have emerged recently as a result of the national focus on terrorism and discuss the potential for future OR/MS modeling and application.

We reflect on the evolution of the strategy field as seen through the window of Management Science. Reflecting the diverse disciplinary roots of strategy research, we identify a broad-ranging body of work that varies with respect to the assumptions made regarding individual rationality and the level of analysis at which the research is carried out. We argue that recent developments begin to delineate a potentially unifying conceptual framework for treating the field's defining questions—the conceptual apparatus of evolutionary economics. We conclude by laying out important challenges for evolutionary economics if it is to serve as a foundation for both the positive and the normative research agendas of the strategy field.

When the simulation department of Management Science was created in 1978 it ushered in an era of significant methodological advances in stochastic simulation. However, the foundation for the field—not just the work that has been published in Management Science—was provided by two papers published long before simulation had its own department in the journal. We will review the seminal papers of Conway, Johnson, and Maxwell (1959) and Conway (1963), and then trace their impact through eight award-winning papers that appeared much later in Management Science.

The development of the information systems (IS) literature in Management Science during the past 50 years reflects the inception, growth, and maturation of several different research streams. The five research streams we identify incorporate different definitions of the managerial problems that relate to IS, the alternate theoretical perspectives and different methodological paradigms to study them, and the levels of the organization at which their primary results impact managerial practice. The decision support and design science research stream studies the application of computers in decision support, control, and managerial decision making. The value of information research stream reflects relationships established based on economic analysis of information as a commodity in the management of the firm. The human-computer systems design research stream emphasizes the cognitive basis for effective systems design. The IS organization and strategy research stream focuses the level of analysis on the locus of value of the IS investment instead of on the perceptions of a system or its user. The economics of information systems and technology research stream emphasizes the application of theoretical perspectives and methods from analytical and empirical economics to managerial problems involving IS and information technologies (IT). Based on a discussion of these streams, we evaluate the IS literature's core contributions to theoretical and managerial knowledge, and make some predictions about the road that lies ahead for IS researchers.

I is truly an honor to be named Editor of Management Science, and I eagerly look forward to serving this distinguished journal. This letter outlines my strategy for further enhancing the journal’s considerable stature. In particular, I highlight what will remain the same and what will change. My intended audience is the entire Management Science community, which includes the authors who submit manuscripts, the editors and reviewers who evaluate manuscripts, and, of course, the readers who “consume” our manuscripts. Before I continue, I would like to express my sincere thanks to Wallace Hopp, the previous Editor-inChief, for his substantial service to the journal and for the gracious assistance he has shown me during the transition. During his term, the journal experienced a significant increase in submissions while at the same time a dramatic improvement in editorial cycle times. The journal expanded in terms of the number of printed articles as well as the breadth of topics covered. Our 50th anniversary volume, designed by Professor Hopp, was highly successful. In sum, his dedication has led to a better Management Science and a better science of management.