The Institute for Operational Research: An Initiative to Extend the Scope of OR

One of the aims in forming the Institute for Operational Research (IOR) in 1963 was to expand the fields of application of OR and to reverse the tendency, then evident, for it to settle down as a mainly in-house, industrial activity deriving its strength from mathematics and the hard sciences, with little research content of its own. The paper outlines the early work done at IOR in pursuit of this mission, especially in multi-organizational settings such as city and regional planning, health services and the building industry. This leads into discussion of the conditions under which the work was done, the style of ‘action-research’ that evolved, its influence at the time, and its relevance to the different circumstances of the present day.