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Management Science: The Legacy of the Past and

Challenge of the Future
Wallace J. Hopp, David Simchi-Levi

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Wallace J. Hopp, David Simchi-Levi (2020) Management Science: The Legacy of the Past and Challenge of the Future.
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 MANAGEMENT SCIENCE
Articles in Advance, pp. 1–11
http://pubsonline.informs.org/journal/mnsc ISSN 0025-1909 (print), ISSN 1526-5501 (online)

Management Science: The Legacy of the Past and Challenge of

the Future
Wallace J. Hopp,a David Simchi-Levib
a
Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109; b Civil and Environmental Engineering Department,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139
Contact: whopp@umich.edu, https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1586-8606 (WJH); dslevi@mit.edu,
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4650-1519 (DS-L)

Accepted: March 5, 2020
Published Online in Articles in Advance:
October 6, 2020
https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2020.3618
Copyright: © 2020 INFORMS
Abstract. This paper uses the 65th anniversary of Management Science as an opportunity to
examine how well the journal has performed against its primary goal to promote de-
velopment and encourage application of a science of management. We also highlight recent
trends that are impacting this mission and discuss how recent initiatives address these
issues.
History: Special Issue of Management Science: 65th Anniversary.

Keywords: management science • history • anniversary

1. Mission editor-in-chief of Management Science, was solidly in

Management Science received its official charter on
December 1, 1953 when the founding members of
The Institute of Management Science (TIMS) ap-
proved a constitution and bylaws for the organiza-
tion that included the following sentence (TIMS 1954,
p. 100):
“To provide a medium for disseminating knowledge
of the management sciences, to stimulate research in
these sciences, and to encourage and improve applica-
tions of this knowledge the Institute shall undertake to
publish a journal, to be called Management Science.”
Although this makes it clear that the mission of
Management Science includes stimulating research,
disseminating knowledge, and encouraging appli-
cations, it does not provide an explicit definition of the
“management sciences” to which these refer.
The reflections of some of the founders (Salveson
1997, Horner 2017) as well as the subsequent history
of the journal, suggests that there was, and still is, no
uniformly accepted definition of management sci-
ences or “management science.” Some authors and
editors have used the term management science as a
synonym for “operations research” (OR), that is, as a
collection of analytic tools. Others have used it to
refer to the application of established tools, including
operations research, economics, behavioral science,
and others, to management problems.
However, as described in the 50th anniversary
article by Hopp (2004), it is clear that at least some of
the founders of TIMS interpreted management sci-
ence very broadly to refer to the creation of a “sci-
ence of management.” C. West Churchman, the first
this camp, writing
My hope was that MS [Management Science] would
be quite different from OR [Operations Research],
because MS, the journal, the meetings, and the re-
search would be the attempt to create and design a
science of management that lived up to the standards
of good science . . .
(Churchman 1994)
Nevertheless, immediately after stating his full-
throated advocacy for a science of management in
this article, Churchman acknowledged that some
of the founders of TIMS had championed the new
Management Science journal only to have a place to
publish their papers on linear programming. These
competing definitions of management science were
evident from the very start of the journal.
One could interpret these differences as a funda-
mental “either or” choice about the purpose of Man-
agement Science. Indeed, as editors ourselves, we have
been told more than once by an author unhappy with
an editorial policy or decision that we were betraying
(what they perceived as) the journal’s mission. But
a less confrontational and more useful interpreta-
tion, which was not available in 1954 when Church-
man was trying to chart the course for the new
journal, is the framework for scientific progress of-
fered by Thomas Kuhn (1962) in his landmark book
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.1
Kuhn’s offered his framework as an alternative to
the traditional view of science as an incremental
progression toward truth through the accumulation

1

2 Management Science, Articles in Advance, pp. 1–11, © 2020 INFORMS
of facts and ideas. From his study of the history of
science, Kuhn recognized that science does not al-
ways make steady and continuous progress. Instead,
it sometimes gets stuck in dead ends or engages in
conflicts between factions advocating different theories.
Kuhn also felt that the influential “conjecture and ref-
utation” model of Karl Popper (1963) was an over-
simplification of reality. In the Popperian view, all
scientific theories are conjectures that are held pro-
visionally, and scientific studies seek to refute these
theories. Theories that withstand refutations are re-
tained, whereas those that are refuted are discarded.
But Kuhn noted that scientists only rarely work in
refutation mode. Much of scientific research focuses
on affirmation, application, or extension of theories.
To account for these sociological realities, Kuhn
proposed that science iterates between periods of
normal science, in which researchers flesh out and
apply an established paradigm, and occasional rev-
olutions that lead to new paradigms. During normal
science, progress can approximate the traditional
development-by-accumulation model, whereas dur-
ing revolutions the refutations of the Popperian model
are on prominent display. But the overall picture is one
of punctuated equilibrium, with sporadic crises, con-
troversies, and even regressions.
In the context of the search for a science of man-
agement, methodological research (e.g., the linear
programming work of the scholars in Churchman’s
recollections) or applications (e.g., the efforts of scholars
to leverage well-known results from relevant disci-
plines to address management problems) represent
normal science. But, from time to time, scholars have
offered new ways to see management, or a subarea of
management, through a scientific lens. These latter ef-
forts offer potential paradigm shifts that can open up
new avenues for normal science.
Viewed in this way, methodological tools, appli-
cations, and paradigmatic frameworks are all valid,
indeed necessary, contributions for building a science
of management. Arguments about which type of re-
search constitutes “real” management science are un-
necessary and counterproductive. The two essential chal-
lenges for Management Science are to attract and evaluate
papers that make important contributions to the Kuhn
cycle of progress toward a science of management.
Attracting papers is the simpler of these two chal-
lenges. Since 1969, Management Science has used a
departmental structure for its editorial board, which
enables knowledgeable, eminent, and well-connected
department editors to align their editorial priorities
with current trends in their disciplinary area and to
leverage their stature to attract papers. Tools such as
presentations at professional meetings, solicited pa-
pers, and special issues have been used to seek out
potentially attractive papers.
Hopp and Simchi-Levi: Management Science: Past and Future
Evaluating papers is a much more difficult and
fundamental challenge for any research publication.
At Management Science, the departmental structure is
set up to ensure that a given paper is reviewed by
editors and referees who are well-trained and ac-
complished scholars in the appropriate disciplinary
area. The hope, and often the reality, is a review team
that has the necessary background to assess the
novelty of the approach, the correctness of the logic,
and the clarity of the exposition.
But evaluating a paper involves more than check-
ing novelty, logic, and exposition. It also requires
assessing contribution and even visualization of the
future of the field. A paper that addresses an issue
not on the critical path forward will not make an
important contribution. However, because different
people have different views of the future, they can
differ as to whether a paper addresses a critical issue
or not. As a result, acceptance and rejection decisions
based on contribution can appear to the author as
matters of taste rather than substance.
Assessing contribution is a pivotal problem for all
scientific journals. It is particularly important for an
elite journal like Management Science because self-
screening of submissions limits the number of pa-
pers that are rejected because they lack novelty, ex-
hibit flawed logic, or have impenetrable exposition. A
large fraction of accept or reject decisions hinge on the
question of contribution.
Because contribution assessments involve judge-
ment about the future, these decisions imply a risk
trade-off that can be characterized in terms of type I
and type II errors from statistics. A type I error is
accepting a paper that does not make an important
contribution, whereas a type II error is rejecting a
paper that does. Depending on how he or she handles
uncertainty about contribution, an editor can trade off
one type of error for the other. For example, a de-
partment editor that rejects papers for which there
are any doubts about contribution (e.g., from conflict-
ing referee reports) will minimize type I errors at the
expense of increased type II errors. In contrast, an
editor who takes chances on potentially high-impact
papers for which some uncertainty about contribu-
tion exists risks higher type I errors in order to reduce
type II errors. In elite journals like Management Science
with low acceptance rates, the tendency is to focus
conservatively on keeping type I errors low because
there are plenty of submissions with which to fill
the issues.
For normal science submissions (e.g., an improved
methodology, a new model of a familiar management
problem, or a model of a new management problem
using familiar techniques), assessing contribution is
challenging but manageable. Because the paper makes
use of accepted paradigms, the reviewers are likely to
Hopp and Simchi-Levi: Management Science: Past and Future
Management Science, Articles in Advance, pp. 1–11, © 2020 INFORMS
have well-defined and consistent views of what is and
is not important to the progress of the research area.
But for submissions that claim paradigmatic change
contributions, assessment is much harder. In the past,
Management Science has had an Interdisciplinary Man-
agement Research and Applications department to
provide a mechanism for reviewing papers that do not
fit neatly into the paradigms represented by the tra-
ditional disciplines. The journal has also made use of
at-large editors or the editor-in-chief to handle spe-
cial case papers that could fall through the cracks.
Nevertheless, it is almost certain that type II errors are
higher for high-risk, high-reward papers that claim to make
paradigm-changing contributions.
To underline the last comment, we refer to Gans
and Shepherd (1994) who documented a variety of ex-
amples where influential papers by leading economists—
Nobel Laureates and Clark Medalists to be specific—
were rejected by leading economics journals. The
most striking example is that of Fischer Black and
Myron Scholes’ celebrated formula, see Black and
Scholes (1973), that estimates the price of European
style options. Their paper was rejected twice, without
any referee report, before two leading economists spoke
with the editor of the Journal of Political Economy; for
details, see Gans and Shepherd (1994).
2. Past Processes and Performance
With the Kuhn model of scientific progress in mind,
we now turn to a review of Management Science’s past
performance relative to its mission to promote de-
velopment and encourage application of a science of
management. Obviously, direct measurement of the
journal’s impact on the evolution of a science of
management is impossible. So, we focus instead on
policies and processes used to attract and evaluate
papers and proxies for quality and impact of the results.
To avoid repetition of a previous retrospective
analysis that was done on the occasion of the 50th
anniversary 15 years ago, we begin by summarizing
the following key observations from that review
(Hopp 2004):
• From 1954–1969, the journal operated without
departments. Submissions were made to the editor-
in-chief, who guided them to members of the editorial
board for review.
• Since 1969, the journal has used a departmental
structure, in which authors submit papers to the
department that best fits their work. This led to an
expansion of the editorial board to include qualified
associate editors in the fields represented by the
departments.
• The number and names of departments have shifted
over time. For example, although finance and marketing
have been stable since 1969, accounting wasn’t added
until 1988. OR and operations management (OM)
3
have always been present but have used various names
and sometimes multiple departments to reflect differ-
ent emphases.
• Between 1965 and 1975, the journal maintained
separate theory and practice series.
• The majority of papers published from 1954–2004
were in the OR and OM fields.
• As of 2004, 474 papers published from 1954–2004
had been cited 50 or more times. Roughly half these
were in OR and OM fields. But the other half of the
highly cited papers covered all of the management
disciplines represented by the other departments.
• Management Science has consistently been among
the highest-ranked academic publications in the man-
agement field as measured by citation-based metrics
and has been included in the lists of journals used to
evaluate research in all major rankings of business
schools (e.g., Financial Times).
• Seventeen Nobel Prize winners (all in economics)
had published in Management Science as of 2004.
These observations paint a picture of a journal that has
deliberately evolved an editorial structure to reach out
to a wide range of business disciplines. This has led to a
substantial number of influential publications (at least as
measured by citations) across these business disciplines.
However, over its first half century, Management Sci-
ence emphasized OR and OM at the expense of other
management-related disciplines. Nevertheless, as in-
dicated by the presence of so many Nobelists in eco-
nomics among its authors, the journal has attracted su-
perstar scholars outside the OR/OM areas.
In the 15 years since the 50th anniversary, the
dominance of OM and OR has eroded somewhat.
As shown in Figure 1, since 2015, the finance de-
partment has received the largest number of sub-
missions among Management Science departments. It
is likely that this is associated with the rapidly emerg-
ing financial technology, including peer-to-peer lend-
ing, digital payment systems, and cryptocurrencies, all
of which require the integration of economics and
management science techniques, for example, game
theory, contract design, and operational management,
with traditional finance.
With the finance department leading in submission
volume, operations management has been second,
followed by behavioral economics and marketing. A
reasonable interpretation is that Management Science
is attracting a more balanced disciplinary mix of
papers that address the science of management.
Management Science has also continued to attract
papers from Nobel Prize–winning authors. Table 1
shows that the set of Nobelist authors has added 5
new members since 2014, bringing the total to 22 as of
2018. To gain insight into the journal’s perfor-
mance relative to its mission, it is instructive to look at
why these eminent economists chose to publish in
 Hopp and Simchi-Levi: Management Science: Past and Future
4 Management Science, Articles in Advance, pp. 1–11, © 2020 INFORMS

Figure 1. Management Science Publications by Discipline, 2003–2018

Management Science. Examination of their papers to situations in which players have incomplete infor-
shows that some (e.g., Roth) had backgrounds in OR mation. Harsanyi’s work, along with that of other
or were polymaths (e.g., Arrow, Simon) who worked game theory pioneers, created a revolution that has
in many fields and published in Management Science profoundly shaped the paradigm for understanding
as a premier OM/OR outlet. Others (e.g., Heckman, competition used in economics over the past 30 years.
Myerson, Aumann) published commentaries about Kahneman won the Nobel “for having integrated
current status and future directions of research. But, insights from psychological research into economic
most importantly, some of the Nobelists (e.g., Harsanyi, science, especially concerning human judgment
Kahneman) published in Management Science because and decision-making under uncertainty” (Royal
they were doing work so revolutionary it was not Swedish Academy of Sciences 2002) In 1979, he and
yet part of mainstream economics. In Kuhnian terms, Tversky published two seminal papers, one on
they were developing new paradigms that would prospect theory in Econometrica and the other on
fundamentally alter the field. prediction in Management Science (Kahneman and
For example, Harsanyi won the Nobel for “pio- Tversky 1979a, b). These plus a 1974 Science paper
neering analysis of equilibria in the theory of non-
cooperative games” (Royal Swedish Academy of Table 1. Nobel Prize–Winning Management Science Authors
Sciences 1994) The three papers that comprised the and Years of Their Prizes
foundation for his prize were all published in Man- 2017 Richard Thaler 1994 Reinhard Selten, 1994
agement Science (Harsanyi 1967, 1968a, 1968b). Al- 2013 Eugene F. Fama 1994 John Harsanyi, 1994
though the foundations for game theory had been 2012 Alvin Roth 1990 William F. Sharpe,1990
established by Von Neumann and Morgenstern (1944) 2007 Roger Myerson 1990 Harry Markowitz, 1990
2005 Robert Aumann 1990 Franco Modigliani, 1990
and Nash (1950), game theorists were largely distinct
2004 Finn Kydland 1988 Maurice Allais, 1988
from economists in the 1960–1970s and published pre- 2003 Robert F. Engle 1984 Richard E. Stone, 1984
dominantly outside the economics literature.2 Harsanyi, 2002 Vernon L. Smith 1978 Herbert Simon, 1978
who had PhD degrees in philosophy and sociology, 2002 Daniel Kahneman 1975 Tjalling Koopmans, 1975
found the editors of the relatively young Management 2000 James Heckman 1972 Kenneth Arrow, 1972
1995 Robert E. Lucas, Jr. 1970 Paul Samuelson, 1970
Science to be receptive to papers extending game theory
Hopp and Simchi-Levi: Management Science: Past and Future
Management Science, Articles in Advance, pp. 1–11, © 2020 INFORMS
on heuristics and biases (Tversky and Kahneman
1974) formed the core of Kahneman’s prize-winning
research.3 Prior to the Science and Management Sci-
ence papers, almost all of Kahneman’s research had
appeared in mainstream psychology journals, which
was not surprising given that all of his degrees were
in psychology. The Econometrica paper was the first
of Kahneman’s works to appear in an economics
journal. He would not publish regularly in the eco-
nomics literature until the 1990s, by which time his
work and that of other behavioral scholars was be-
ginning to shift the economics paradigm away from
a rigidly rational model of human behavior and toward
incorporation of an empirically realistic one.
Helping to promote the game theory and behav-
ioral revolutions in economics is a major accom-
plishment in line with the mission to promote a sci-
ence of management. But the question of whether
Management Science can replicate this accomplish-
ment in the future and across the range of manage-
ment disciplines depends on why the journal was able
to attract and recognize the importance of these
paradigm-changing papers. One possible answer is
that in the 1960s and 1970s, Management Science was
younger and hungrier than the older and more
prestigious economics journals. But if that is the case,
it begs the question of whether the journal is still
capable of recognizing the importance of uncon-
ventional but important papers now that it has be-
come established as a premier management journal.
To help us understand the editorial challenges of
handling such papers, it is instructive to consider
some more recent cases in an established area where
acceptance standards are high. We do this by con-
sidering two important OM papers published in
Management Science in the 1990s.
The first paper is “Principles on the Benefits of
Manufacturing Process Flexibility” by Jordan and
Graves (1995), which showed that a manufacturing
system comprised of plants with very limited prod-
uct flexibility can respond almost as effectively to
fluctuations in demand mix as a system made up of
fully flexible plants, provided the product flexibil-
ity exhibits an overlapping pattern the authors
called “chaining.”
This paper has nearly 900 Google citations and has
inspired research into flexibility in a wide range of
contexts, including by both of us in studies of
workforce flexibility (Hopp et al. 2004) and supply
chain robustness (Simchi-Levi et al. 2018).
The second paper is “Information Distortion in a
Supply Chain: The Bullwhip Effect” (Lee et al. 1997),
which described four mechanisms that cause an order
stream to become more variable as it moves up-
stream in a supply chain and management actions
for mitigating the consequences of this information
5
distortion. With over 5,000 Google citations, this
paper is one of the most highly cited papers ever
published in Management Science or the operations
management field. Again, one of us is among the
many scholars who have fleshed out the insights and
implications of this path breaking paper (see Chen
et al. 2000).
However, although chaining and the bullwhip ef-
fect are now integral parts of the OM research par-
adigm, neither paper was straightforward to publish.
Both went through multiple rounds of review and
faced significant criticism from the referees, and both
took over a year to revise. The likely reason is that
neither paper had the typical characteristics that
made OM papers easy for referees to recommend for
acceptance at that time. Neither paper represented a
significant methodological advance. Neither stated
their purpose as a well-defined optimization problem
or a simple hypothesis and neither demonstrated
their contribution through a direct argument (e.g., an
analytic proof or empirical analysis of a novel data
set). Instead, both papers made use of multiple
models and arguments to understand different facets
of the phenomenon they were examining. As a result,
reading these papers is a little like peeling back the
layers of an onion: Our understanding increases as each
successive layer is revealed. But, as any experienced
OM scholar knows, a layered, multimodel argument is
generally a much more difficult sell to referees than is a
direct analysis of a crisp problem statement.
So how did these two papers get through the review
process despite the concerns raised by the referees
and go on to become classics of the OM canon?
We suspect a big reason is that both had the benefit
of department editors who were exceptional scholars
(Joe Thomas of Cornell for the chaining paper and
Marshall Fisher of Penn for the bullwhip paper) who
had the confidence to make judgment calls that ma-
terially helped the papers through the review process.
The bullwhip paper also had the good fortune to be
part of a special issue where the issue editors (Mar-
shall Fisher and Steve Graves—yes, the same Graves
who coauthored the chaining paper) were proactively
seeking new and innovative research in OM. As a
result, the editors were willing to take the risk of a
type I error associated with publishing an uncon-
ventional paper in order to avoid the risk of a type II
error from not publishing an influential, paradigm-
changing paper.
Of course, it is easy to praise the courage of editors
after the test of time has ratified their decisions. But
decisive actions by editors on behalf of potentially
game-changing papers can backfire. One of the most
infamous cases of a type I error was the “cold fusion”
paper of Fleischmann and Pons (1989), which was
published only four weeks after submission and

6 Management Science, Articles in Advance, pp. 1–11, © 2020 INFORMS
before other scientists had an opportunity to replicate
the results.
After a flurry of failed attempts at replication, cold
fusion was repudiated within a few weeks of publi-
cation and the field moved on. But the frenzy created
by the publication probably resulted in millions of
dollars spent replicating a result that never should
have been published (see Huizenga 1993 for a more
detailed summary and assessment). Wilson (2002)
provides a list of good peer review practices that
were violated in the cold fusion case. Clearly, in
addition to having editors willing to take chances on
potentially paradigm-changing papers, we also need
editors and processes who understand and respect
the scientific publishing process.
Attracting and recognizing paradigm-changing pa-
pers within the various management disciplines is a key
way Management Science can help promote the de-
velopment of a science of management. But it is not
enough. Disciplines are useful academic abstractions
that divide the practice of management into subareas
amenable to different research paradigms. But be-
cause the practice of management cuts across disci-
plines, it will ultimately become necessary for re-
search to do so as well. An essential way to execute
interdisciplinary research is to have scholars from
different disciplines, as well as scholars and practi-
tioners, work together. Figure 2 shows that the frac-
tion of papers in Management Science with these types
of interdisciplinary authorship teams has increased
modestly over the past decade.4
Figure 2. Fraction and Type of Interdisciplinary Papers, 2001–2018
Hopp and Simchi-Levi: Management Science: Past and Future
In addition to interdisciplinarity, another trend that
is important to the match of research to practice is
data. We will take up this trend in more detail in the
next section. But for purposes of our historical survey,
Figure 3 shows the fraction of Management Science
papers that contain different types of data. This in-
dicates that papers making use of synthetic data are
on the decline; papers using laboratory or experi-
mental data are flat; and papers using real-world data
are on the rise. This is almost certainly a good thing
because the big data revolution is both spurring an
increase in the use of data in management practice
and generating an abundance of data for research
purposes. However, as shown in Figure 4, the use of
real-world data is not even across departments. For
example, most Finance and Information Systems pa-
pers make use of real-world data, whereas less than
half of Marketing and Operations Management pa-
pers do so. This may indicate an opportunity to in-
crease the relevance and timeliness of research in
some management disciplines.
Finally, one last historical trend that bears noting is
the increase in the length of Management Science pa-
pers, shown in Figure 5. Although the shift away from
paper publishing is easing the physical publishing
constraints on journal pages, there is still a limit to the
number of pages readers can read and reviewers can
review. Hence, a continued increase in length will
ultimately impede the impact of papers on research
and practice. This needs to be factored into plans for
the journal’s future.
Hopp and Simchi-Levi: Management Science: Past and Future
Management Science, Articles in Advance, pp. 1–11, © 2020 INFORMS 7

Figure 3. Percentage of Management Science Papers with Data, 2003–2018

3. Future Trends, Challenges, and Actions
Finally, we shift our focus from the past to the future.
To help us identify actions that will enable Manage-
ment Science to execute on its mission, we first identify
some key trends in research, technology, and business
that are affecting what is currently happening in the
journal and what needs to happen in the future. In our
opinion, the following are the most important:
1. Editorial conservatism: As noted earlier, the rising
stature of the journal and the associated growth in
submission volume creates subtle incentives for ed-
itors and referees to elevate acceptance standards.
To ensure published papers are worthy of the Man-
agement Science imprimatur, review teams make in-
creasingly stringent demands aimed at minimizing
type I errors. Although high standards are appropriate
for a flagship journal, a drift toward excessive risk
aversion poses two important problems. First, increased
emphasis on reducing type I errors can lead to higher
type II errors, which threatens the journal’s ability to

Figure 4. Percentage of Management Science Papers in Various Disciplines with Real-World Data, 2003–2018

8 Management Science, Articles in Advance, pp. 1–11, © 2020 INFORMS
Figure 5. Average Length of Papers in Management Science, 1980–2018
serve as a channel for important paradigm-changing
papers. Second, as review teams become increasingly
fastidious about publication standards and find ever
smaller reasons to reject papers, authors respond
predictably by attempting to deflect potential criti-
cisms. This leads to more cases, more results, and
more exposition, which makes papers longer and
more difficult to read and review.
2. Digitization and automation: Almost every aspect
of human behavior, from financial transactions and
healthcare procedures to social media interactions
and entertainment preferences, are being captured
and stored in digital form. At the same time, formerly
manual decisions, such as pricing, are increasingly
being turned over to computers. This revolution
portends a seismic shift in business as well as other
spheres of human existence.
3. Data analytics: The combination of machine learn-
ing and optimization is fundamentally changing the
way data are analyzed. In a reversal of the approach
of traditional statistics, which uses data to fit a pre-
determined model, analytics approaches make it pos-
sible to create useful models directly from data. This is
already having a profound impact on management
practice and has the potential to completely transform
the traditional model/analysis approach to research.
4. Healthcare: In the United States, healthcare has
increased from about 5% of the gross domestic product
in 1960 to about 18% today. In addition to being big-
ger than ever before, the public/private mix of players
and the idiosyncratic structure of the payment system
makes healthcare one of the most managerially complex
industries in existence.
5. Sharing economy: The rise of the sharing economy
and all its variants (e.g., access economy, gig econ-
omy, circular economy, collaborative consumption,
on-demand economy, peer economy, rental economy,
Hopp and Simchi-Levi: Management Science: Past and Future
cocreation, etc.) is spurring new business models and
hence new business challenges.
The following are concrete steps that are being
taken or discussed to address the challenges pre-
sented by the above-listed trends:
A. Editorial empowerment: A direct way to counter
the drift toward excessive editorial conservativism is
to rest decision making in the hands of department
editors who have an appropriate sense of the type I/
type II risk balance that should be struck. We noted
earlier that the paradigm-changing papers on chaining
(Jordan and Graves 1995) and the bullwhip effect (Lee
et al. 1997) were accepted by eminent and visionary
editors who were confident enough to influence and
even overrule referees. We suspect that many of the
other unconventional but influential papers pub-
lished during Management Science’s 65-year history
had similar editorial intervention. Hence, it is vital
that the department editor roles be filled by indi-
viduals willing and able to act as editors rather than
vote counters. Recruiting such individuals is one of
the most important functions of the editor-in-chief.
Beyond finding the right people, it is also important
to train and support editors and to manage expec-
tations of review teams. A major reason for the re-
luctance of department editors to overrule associate
editors or referees is that all of these roles are vol-
unteer jobs. It is natural for a department editor to
worry that a volunteer associate editor or referee who
feels that his or her views have not been respected will
not accept a future review request. Hence, it is vital
that department editors be informed they have been
appointed on the basis of their expertise and judge-
ment and are, therefore, expected to execute them.
At the same time, the editor-in-chief needs to (a) back
up the judgement calls of the department editors
and (b) help the rest of the editorial board understand
Hopp and Simchi-Levi: Management Science: Past and Future
Management Science, Articles in Advance, pp. 1–11, © 2020 INFORMS
that their roles are to advise the department editors,
not to cast votes on papers.
B. Reshaping department structure: One way to re-
spond to big trends in business practice and/or re-
search is to shift the department structure. Since
departments were introduced in 1969, the number
and nature of the departments has been updated
many times. Some of these changes may have re-
flected the tastes of the editor-in-chief. But most of
them were attempts to better match departments and
editors to contemporary areas of management re-
search and practice. A recent example is the behav-
ioral economics department, which was introduced in
2011 to publish original research related to behavioral
economics that also had important managerial im-
plications for business and public policy. As such, the
department was intended to serve as an instrument to
encourage incorporation of the behavioral paradigm
created by Kahneman and his contemporaries into
the science of management. However, as behavioral
economics increasingly became part of mainstream
economics, the need for a separate department ebbed.
To attract papers specifically related to the science of
management, rather than of general interest to the
economics or psychology communities, the behavioral
economics department was eliminated in 2018 and the
topic was incorporated into the decision analysis de-
partment. Note that a similar sequence occurred with
game theory, which had a separate department from
1969–1985, after which the topic was addressed in a
business-focused manner in the operations manage-
ment, business strategy, and other departments.
In 2018, three new departments were introduced to
respond to some of the trends listed earlier. The big
data analytics department and the revenue man-
agement and market analytics departments were set
up to encourage and disseminate research relevant
to the digitization/automation and data analytics
trends, whereas the healthcare management depart-
ment was established to promote research related to
the revolution in healthcare. It is entirely possible that
the big data analytics department could prove to be a
transitional department that eventually gets merged
into one or more departments as analytics becomes
an established part of many streams of management
research. But this is to be expected as departmental
structure evolves to keep abreast of a changing world.
C. Special issues: Another way to promote research
targeted at important topics is the use of special is-
sues. As we noted earlier, the bullwhip paper (Lee
et al. 1997) was published in a special issue. Since
the 50th anniversary issue, Management Science has
published special issues on “Incentives and Coordi-
nation in Operations Management,” “Electronic Mar-
kets,” “Open Source Software,” “Strategic Dynam-
ics,” “Marketing Within the Enterprise and Beyond,”
9
“Behavioral Economics and Finance,” and “Business
Analytics.” In 2018, Management Science introduced a
special issue on Data-Driven Prescriptive Analytics.
Following our earlier discussion, it is not surprising
that this special was focused on papers that lever-
age predictive and descriptive analytics to derive
effective solutions for business problems. The special
issue has attracted a significant number of submis-
sions, in part, because it emphasized interdisciplin-
ary research that brings together disciplines such
as finance, marketing, operations management, and
data science.
More recently, Management Science introduced a
new special issue on business and climate change.
Climate change poses major risks and opportunities
for a wide array of companies and industries—and to
society at large. Because climate change needs to be
studied from various functional lenses as well as
cross-disciplinary ones, the guest editors, who are
experts on the topic, span the various disciplines
covered by the journal: accounting and finance, busi-
ness strategy, entrepreneurship and innovation, op-
erations, and organizations.
D. Fast Track submissions: Special issues are a good
way to attract papers in specific areas. But paradigm-
changing papers don’t always surface in predictable
areas. Neither Harsanyi’s game theory paper nor
Kahneman’s behavioral economics paper appeared in
special issues. To attract and accept major papers like
these in the future, Management Science needs mech-
anisms beyond that of the special issue process.
The most recent mechanism for encouraging big-
idea, big-impact articles is the Fast Track submission
process, introduced in 2018. By explicitly soliciting
papers that make very specific contributions with
strong potential to influence future research and re-
warding these with a streamlined review process, the
Fast Track system is designed to attract paradigm-
changing papers. Furthermore, by narrowing the role
of referees to checking technical correctness and
clarity, the process clearly places subjective judge-
ments in the hands of the department editors, so they
can take appropriate risks. Finally, by limiting Fast
Track papers to 25 pages, this policy may help to
mitigate the increasing trend in paper length.
In 2018, Management Science received 240 submis-
sions to the Fast Track, whereas in 2019 we received
more than 300 submissions. The average cycle time
from submission to first decision for Fast Track papers
is significantly below that of regular submissions: In
2019 (2018), it was 30 (21) days for Fast Track and
68 (61) for regular submissions. Finally, as expected,
the acceptance rate for Fast Track papers (about 8%)
is a bit lower than the acceptance rate for regular
papers (about 10%) implying that the bar for big-idea,
big-impact articles is a bit higher.

10
E. Data and code disclosure: As we noted above,
data of all types is rapidly becoming available; the
number of Management Science papers making use of
real-world data are also on the rise. We expect this
trend to continue and for data-driven research to
become increasingly central to the development of a
science of management. To enable scholars to repli-
cate results and avoid or correct type II errors like that
in the cold fusion case, it is vital to disclose the data
underlying research results. Management Science has
had a policy encouraging data disclosure since 2013.
As of 2019, this policy has been strengthened to re-
quire data disclosure unless precluded by confiden-
tiality restrictions. Because emerging data analysis
often relies on computational methods, for which
tuning and other implementation details affect the
results, this policy also requires disclosure of code
used to generate the results. The policy only allows
use of the data and code for replication purposes
unless permission is obtained from the authors for
additional uses. The new data and code disclosure
policy is available online at https://pubsonline.informs
.org/page/mnsc/datapolicy.
F. Web-based discussion forum: An important em-
phasis by Management Science’s previous and current
editor-in-chiefs is to encourage new areas that have
not traditionally been explored. One way to achieve
this objective is to publish special issues and surveys
that define or highlight the state of the art in an
emerging area. A second vehicle, as observed in the
January 2018 editorial statement (Simchi-Levi 2018),
is to facilitate a web-based discussion that will feature
an important paper and facilitate comments from
readers of the journal. Along this line, the blog page
of Management Science’s website is a new feature
implemented in 2018. Since that time, the journal
has introduced a featured article in every issue and
summarized the paper’s contribution in a short blog.
From time to time, the journal asks industry and
academic experts to reflect on the featured paper, as
was done in the case of the paper by Santiago R.
Balseiro and Yonatan Gur (Balseiro and Gur 2019)
where Nicolas Stier-Moses, Facebook Core Data Sci-
ence, and Ramesh Johari, Stanford University, De-
partment of Management Science and Engineering,
reflected on the importance and contributions of
this research.
G. Outreach efforts: In the long-term, development
of a genuine science of management will hinge on
bringing together theory and practice. Only if the
models, analyses, and theories of the academic world
address the challenges faced by practicing managers
will Management Science achieve Churchman’s vision
to create “a world and local management in the
service of humanity” (Churchman 1994, p. 10).
Clearly, academics cannot achieve this in isolation
Hopp and Simchi-Levi: Management Science: Past and Future
Management Science, Articles in Advance, pp. 1–11, © 2020 INFORMS
through research alone. Researchers need to work
with practitioners to understand the essential chal-
lenges they face. Scholars also need to disseminate
their results beyond the research community so that
practitioners can make use of them. This is one of the
objectives of the featured article: summarize and trans-
late scientific research to the general public in a way that
is meaningful and insightful for that audience.
In conclusion, looking back over the first 65 years of
Management Science, it is clear that great progress has
been made toward the goal of promoting develop-
ment and encouraging the application of a science of
management. The journal has expanded from a nar-
row emphasis on OR/OM to a broad synthesis of the
full range of business disciplines. It has been a ma-
jor channel for some of the most important break-
throughs in economics as well as the traditional
business disciplines (see the other retrospective ar-
ticles for more detailed discussion of these). And a
number of the research results published in the journal
have become standard parts of management practice.
Here are a few memorable examples:
• Holt, Modigliani, Muth, and Simon’s model (Holt
et al. 1955, 1956) is the foundation for modern pro-
duction and sales planning technologies.
• Wagner and Whitin’s dynamic lot-size (Wagner
and Whitin 1958) is now an important building block
in today’s supply chain planning.
• Frank M. Bass’ model (Bass 1969) is widely used
in forecasting sales of new products.
• The chaining strategy (Jordan and Graves 1995)
discussed before has influenced the way process
flexibility is applied in a variety of industries.
• The bullwhip paper (Lee at al. 1997) mentioned
earlier motivated management practices around in-
formation sharing, lead time reduction, and every-
day low pricing strategies to cope with the increase
in variability.
At the same time, there has never been a more
exciting time for the future of Management Science. The
massive increase in data availability, the proliferation
of analytics tools, and the rise of new business models
are converging to create an unprecedented need and
an extraordinary opportunity for the development
of a science of management. No publication is better
positioned than Management Science to bring together
the people and ideas to exploit this opportunity for
the good of humanity.
Endnotes
1
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Kuhn (1962) is one of the most
highly cited books of all time, with well over 100,000 Google citations
not counting the one from this article.
2
The exception was Econometrica, which published game theory
papers earlier than other economics journals. But the Constitution of
the Econometrica Society, which publishes Econometrica, states its
Hopp and Simchi-Levi: Management Science: Past and Future
Management Science, Articles in Advance, pp. 1–11, © 2020 INFORMS
purpose as “advancement of economic theory in relation to statistics
and mathematics” (Econometric Society 1955, p. 126). So, publishing
mathematics papers, as game theory papers were often regarded,
was a natural fit with the mission of Econometrica.
3
Tversky died six years before the Nobel Prize was awarded for his
joint work with Kahneman. The prize is not awarded posthumously.
4 50(1):83–98.
Note that the numbers in Figure 2 do not include coauthorship by
academics from different business disciplines because business
school faculty, unlike faculty in science, engineering, and social
science, give their affiliation at the school level, rather than at the
disciplinary level. At the same time, it includes papers coauthored by
engineering and business faculty, who could both be OM scholars.
Because we cannot tell whether the former undercount is larger or
smaller than the latter overcount, we cannot say whether the fraction
of interdisciplinary papers shown in Figure 2 is high or low. How-
ever, we can say that the true number is certainly larger than the total
less the business-engineering papers, which still shows the total
number of interdisciplinary papers increasing over time.
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