‘A festering sore’: the issue of professionalism in the history of the Operational Research Society

An essential component of the history of Operational Research (OR) in Britain is the institutional development of the discipline. In this respect, a defining element is the debate on the issue of professionalism, which took place within the Operational Research Society (ORS) in the later 1960s and 1970s. For the historian, the debate provides major insights into the composition of the OR community at a critical stage in its development following on the sustained expansion of ORS membership in the 1960s. As this article reveals, the proposed movement of the ORS from ‘learned society’ to ‘professional’ status proved to be a deeply divisive issue, with a hard core of ORS members, both academics and practitioners, combining to resist the recommendations of the contemporary ORS Council and the leading officers of the Society. The article focuses on the debates on what one protagonist viewed as ‘a festering sore’ in the history of the ORS. In this respect, it provides a prologue to a second article commenting on the origins and results of the recent decision of the ORS Council to establish a professional membership grade—‘Fellow of the Operational Research Society’.