Opportunities and pitfalls for ethical analysis in operations research and the management sciences

Operations research (OR) is basically concerned with the relationship between scientific modelling and the application of models in social contexts and social practice. This problematic is also central in core domains of the management sciences (MS). At the level of the relevance criteria for models, and insofar as the specification of goals belongs to the OR/MS domains (which is at least partially the case), these research fields inherit some of the basic, enduring questions concerning prudence, art and science. New ethical challenges must be addressed to promote the understanding of the interplay between social science, institutional design, and expertise. It will be argued that efficiency questions—which lie at the heart of the OR/MS problematic—are best understood against a background of ethical questions. The specificities of the field of ethics, it will also be argued, result in a number of pitfalls.