Russ, as he was called by his friends, served as president of the Operations Research Society of America (ORSA) in 1956 and 1957, and he was a co-author of "Introduction to Operations Research" [1], one of the very first textbooks in OR/MS, published in 1957. It was translated into many languages; for example, the German translation gave many business students in Germany their first exposure to O.R. In total, Ackoff wrote more than 300 scholarly publications and more than 30 books. Ackoff emphasized in particular the traditional virtue of interdisciplinarity in O.R. Later on, in 1979, he deeply regretted that the "original interdisciplinarity of O.R. has completely disappeared" [2, p. 95].

In the first 30 years of the INFORMS journals Operations Research (Vol. 1 in 1952) and Management Science (Vol. 1 in 1953/54), Ackoff published many papers that covered a broad variety of topics such as:

• "A Comparison of Operational Research in the U.S.A. and in Great Britain" in 1957 [3],
  
  
• "Operations Research and National Planning" in 1957 [4],
  
  
• "Management Misinformation Systems" in 1967 [5],
  
  
• "Toward an Idealized University" in 1968 [6]
  
  
• "A black ghetto's research on a university" in 1970 [7],
  
  
• "Towards a system of systems concepts" in 1971 [8],
  
  
• "Science in the Systems Age: Beyond IE, OR, and MS" in 1973 [9], and
  
  
• "National Development Planning Revisited" in 1975 [10].

These titles do not sound like contemporary O.R., do they? They imply no mathematical programming, no simulation, no branch-and-bound, no combinatorial standard problem (traveling salesman, knapsack, set covering, assembly line balancing, etc.), no queuing theory. Ackoff's topics do not sound close to the jargon — our "secret code" [11] — of contemporary OR/MS mathematicians.

Quite early, way back in 1957, Russ sensed fundamental differences between American operations research and British operational research [3]. This was the year of the first international conference in O.R., the forerunner of the foundation of IFORS (International Federation of Operational Research). Right after the conference, a report about it was published in The Economist (September 1957), drafted by John Stringer and Brian Haley. They state, "The American approach to operational research, as was evident at this week's conference at Oxford, differs significantly from the British: the experts from the United Stated were concerned more with the elaboration of its techniques, and with the study of large working systems in all their ramifications, than with a practical case studies and applications British speakers described." This difference was recognized by Russ as well, half a year prior the conference.

Interdisciplinarity of OR/MS


The content of OR/MS has changed over the decades. In the early years, OR/MS was not understood as a discipline based on mathematics; mathematics was a tool of OR/MS, not more. Russ would perhaps have accepted the officious definition published by ORSA in 1977: "Operations research is concerned with scientifically deciding how to best design and operate man-machine systems, usually under the conditions requiring the allocation of scarce resources" [12, p. 1]. No mathematics is mentioned in this definition; instead, "scientifically deciding how to best design and operate man-machine systems" is emphasized, and this requires interdisciplinarity.

Russ did not contribute much to OR/MS mathematics. These were "tools" for him, and he did not pay much attention to the development of the tools. Instead, he was interested in designing and improving social institutions, an umbrella for the selected titles above.

I agree with his skepticism regarding the narrowness of technical (mathematical) progress. In 1970, Ackoff wrote, "O.R. has been dynamic. It has made considerable progress in the last two decades, most of it technical. Continued technical progress will be necessary but not sufficient if O.R. is to thrive, not merely survive. To thrive, O.R. will have to increase its ability to deal with critical social problems and expand its relevance to strategic decision making in private, as well as in public, domains" [7, p. 761].

I also agree with his understanding of disciplines and interdisciplinarity. "Disciplines are categories that facilitate filing the content of science," he wrote. "They are nothing more than filing categories. Nature is not organized the way our knowledge of it is. Furthermore, the body of scientific knowledge can, and has been, organized in different ways. No one way has ontological priority" [9, p. 667].

Kirby and Rosenhead state, "The emphasis on the interdisciplinary approach to decision-making was to be one of Ackoff's continuing concerns" [13, p. 130].

From O.R. Apostle to O.R. Apostate


In the 1970s, Ackoff became more and more disillusioned and disappointed by the increasing move of OR/MS from interdisciplinary coping with social organizations to OR/MS mathematics. In an invited address at a joined meeting of the societies of O.R., MS and IE in 1972, Russ concluded with some resignation, "Meetings such as this one should be dedicated to the marriage of movements, and to the conception and birth of ways of coping with complexity. But, instead, they are wakes at which interdisciplines are laid out and put in display in their best attire. Eulogies are delivered in which accounts are given about how messes were murdered by reducing them to problems, how problems were murdered by reducing them to models, and how models were murdered by excessive exposure to the elements of mathematics" [9, pp. 670f.]. Some years later, he wrote the two famous "farewell" papers, "The Future of Operational Research is Past" and "Resurrecting the Future of Operational Research" [2], published in Great Britain. The members of the British OR Society still keep quoting these contributions. Russ started with the message, "American Operations Research is dead even though it has yet to be buried" [2, p. 93].

In the late 1970s, Russ ceased to write for American OR/MS journals. But somehow, he was persuaded by the editor-in-chief of Operations Research to write another farewell to O.R. in 1987, a "Post Mortem." He accepted and started with the comment, "Like many others who were part of O.R. in the 'early days,' I did not abandon it; it abandoned me" [14, p. 471].

Ackoff concluded, "The field's introversion drove it into a catatonic state in which it died mercifully, but it has yet to be buried. It seems unlikely that, like Finnigan, it will wake during its wake" [14, p. 474].

Maurice Kirby characterized the "intellectual journey of Russell Ackoff" by the sub-title "from O.R. apostle to O.R. apostate" [15]. Russ stayed away from ORSA or TIMS or (after their merger) INFORMS events for at least 20 years.

Russ was always an admonisher in OR/MS. He always had a wide understanding of OR/MS, much beyond the mathematical tools. His criticism found limited resonance within the United States, but was paid much attention to in the United Kingdom.

Variety of Contributions


As mentioned above, Ackoff's work and writings covered a wide range of interests as the following examples illustrate:

The Five Cs of Good Management. Ackoff's writings are many-sided and rich. For instance, I often quote his five Cs, his "essential properties of good management" [16, p. 3]: competence, communicativeness, concern, courage and creativity. This may provoke the question of the essential properties of good OR/MS professionals that I tried to answer [17]. This question is related to a characterization of an interdisciplinary generalist [18].

Ghetto Recovery Advice. In a 1970 paper and other publications, Russ presented a project in which he helped some young courageous citizens of Mantua, a black ghetto in the Philadelphia neighborhood near the University of Pennsylvania, Ackoff's school [7]. This was a difficult project in that the black co-operators from Mantua had to keep it secret — for their own sake — that they got advice from white people. Mantua at that time was a slum area where several gangs routinely fought each other, making it virtually unlivable. But a group called the "Young Great Society" (YGS) led by Herman Wrice was strong enough to build some neighborhood infrastructure and establish some semblance of order. Among other things, the group produced a local newspaper, kept the community a little cleaner, organized school service and initiated a local radio system during that tumultuous time.

One gang member offered this insight: "I used to be affiliated with one of the gangs before I went to the service. I have been home from the service since January. I was in Vietnam. I compare the fighting in Vietnam with the fighting in the streets and find out it is almost the same. The only thing is that in the streets you are fighting your own brother" [7, p. 767]. Ackoff commented, "The brothers are not fighting now. That is why the program might be the greatest event in urban history."

Mantua did not become a "Westend" of Philadelphia, but the general improvement of this district must have been remarkable.

National Planning. Russ was also interested in national planning and made considerable contributions. It started 53 years ago with "O.R. and National Planning" [4]; its focus was India. The second paper "National Development Planning Revisited" [10] came 20 years later; its focus was in Mexico. A third contribution by Ackoff and six co-authors was the well-received "SCATT Report" of 1976 [19] with the design of a national scientific and technological communication system.

EIT, a new psychological typology. Ackoff was creative in many aspects. An example is his creation of the "environmental interaction theory" (EIT) for the huge brewery Anheuser-Busch in Milwaukee. He had to investigate the question, "Why people drink?" He began to search for useful psychological typologies in order to distinguish the drinking behavior of people according to their type. Among the many psychological typologies available, he analyzed C. G. Jung's (1875-1961) distinction between introverts and extroverts. An introvert has little exchange with his environment; an extrovert has much exchange. But does the exchange not have two directions, i.e. from the individual to the environment and vice versa, was Ackoff's question. So he came up with a 2x2 matrix, and he distinguished between

• "objectiverts", who are strongly influenced by the environment, and
  
  
• "subjectiverts", who are weakly influenced by the environment; versus
  
  
• "internalizers", who have little influence on the environment, and
  
  
• "externalizers", who have a strong influence on the environment.

"Introverts" are "internalizing subjectiverts", while "extroverts" are "externalizing objectiverts," the "pure" types. They are in contrast to the "mixed" types, i.e. the "internalizing objectiverts" as well as "externalizing subjectiverts."

Ackoff and his group found out that among the white American population exists a majority of mixed types. Ackoff used test groups to learn about (i) the percentages of the four types in different populations, and (ii) about the different drinking behavior of the four types. On this foundation they developed a base for type group individual advertising [16, chapter 11].

A Brief Summary of Ackoff's Career


A Brief Summary of Ackoff's Career Russ Ackoff was born in Philadelphia on Feb. 12, 1919. He completed undergraduate studies in architecture at the University of Pennsylvania in 1941 and subsequently served in the U.S. Army where he was stationed in the Philippines. After returning from the war, he obtained a doctorate in Philosophy of Science at the University of Pennsylvania and became an assistant professor in Philosophy and Mathematics at Wayne State University (1947 to 1951). In 1951, he and a group of colleagues joined the Case Institute of Technology School of Engineering in Cleveland. There they established one of the world's first Departments of Operations Research.

In 1964 he moved to the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, and helped establish the Social Systems Sciences Department in 1980. This program combined organizational design theory and practice, seeking to escape traditional disciplinary boundaries.

When Ackoff retired from the Wharton School in 1986, he became Anheuser Busch Professor Emeritus of Management Science and founded INTERACT, a consulting firm and think tank. For more details on Ackoff's life and career, see http://ackoffcenter.blogs.com/ackoff_center_weblog/2009/10/russell-l-ackoff-management-consultant-systems-thinker-90.html.

Ackoff's Legacy


Many of Ackoff's writings are still worth reading. By their variety, Russ guides his readers into a rich and manifold intellectual world. His body of work opens a broad spectrum of what OR/MS can be.

Ackoff was not alone with his broad appreciation of OR/MS. He had many colleagues worldwide who shared his understanding, i.e. an interdisciplinary approach to problems quite beyond mathematics. It is almost a tragedy of the field that the two subsets or sub-communities have never tried to form a coalition, the "social technologists" on the one side and the "OR/MS mathematicians" on the other side, as contrasted by Boothroyd [20] and Müller-Merbach [21]. It seems as if both parties prefer to fight each other. Ackoff participated in these fights. But in doing so, do we not fight our own brothers (see above)? A re-union of both parties would perhaps have the potential to make OR/MS much stronger.

Russ was 17 years older than I am. I always considered him one of my distant masters. We met many times, mostly at conferences. I remember several of his always-impressive lectures and many personal discussions with him. In particular, I recall a meeting in the U.K. when he spoke a few words about the late Steve Cook, who obviously had been a close friend to him. Russ had to pause several times, deeply touched, and we all could observe what a deeply feeling, sensitive person Russ was. He will be greatly missed.



Heiner Müller-Merbach (hmm@wiwi.uni-kl.de) is professor emeritus at Universität Kaiserslautern, Kaiserslautern, Germany.

References

1. Churchman, C. West, Russell L. Ackoff and E. Leonard Arnoff, 1957, "Introduction to Operations Research," New York, Wiley.
2. Ackoff, Russell L., 1979, "The Future of Operational Research is Past," The Journal of the Operational Research Society, Vol. 30, No. 2, pp. 93-104; and "Resurrecting the Future of Operational Research," Vol. 30, No. 3, pp. 189-199.
3. Ackoff, Russell L., 1957, "A Comparison of Operational Research in the U.S.A. and in Great Britain," Operational Research Quarterly, Vol. 8, No. 2, pp. 88-100.
4. Ackoff, Russell L., 1957, "Operations Research and National Planning," Operations Research, Vol. 5, No. 4, pp. 457-468.
5. Ackoff, Russell L., 1967, "Management Misinformation Systems," Management Science, Vol. 14, No. 4, pp. B-147-B-156 (continued in Vol. 14, No. 12, pp. B-656-B-658).
6. Ackoff, Russell L., 1968, "Toward an Idealized University," Management Science, Vol. 15, No. 4, pp. B-121-B-131.
7. Ackoff, Russell, L., 1970, "A black ghetto's research on a university," Operations Research, Vol. 18, No. 5, pp. 761-771.
8. Ackoff, Russell L., 1971, "Towards a system of systems concepts," Management Science, Vol. 17, No. 11, pp. 661-671.
9. Ackoff, Russell L., 1973, "Science in the Systems Age: Beyond IE, OR, and MS," Operations Research, Vol. 21, No. 3, pp. 661-671.
10. Ackoff, Russell L., 1975, "National Development Planning Revisited," Operations Research, Vol. 25, No. 2, pp. 207-218.
11. Müller-Merbach, Heiner, 2010, "Our secret code," Omega, Vol. 38, No. 1-2, pp. 1-2.
12. ORSA (ed.), 1977, "Careers in Operations Research," Operations Research Society of America, Baltimore.
13. Kirby, Maurice, and Jonathan Rosenhead, 2005, "IFORS' Operational Research Hall of Fame: Russell L. Ackoff," International Transactions in Operational Research, Vol. 12, No. 1, pp. 129-134.
14. Ackoff, Russell L., 1987, "Presidents' Symposium: OR, a Post Mortem," Operations Research, Vol. 35, No. 3, pp. 471-474.
15. Kirby, M W, 2003, "The intellectual journey of Russell Ackoff: from OR apostle to OR apostate," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Vol. 54, No. 11, pp. 1127-1140.
16. Ackoff, Russell L., 1978, "The Art of Problem Solving — Accompanied by Ackoff's Fables," New York, Wiley.
17. Müller-Merbach, Heiner, 2009, "Essential properties of good OR/MS professionals," Omega, Vol. 37, No. 1, pp.1-2.
18. Müller-Merbach, Heiner, 2009, "The interdisciplinary generalist," Omega, Vol. 37, No. 3, pp. 495-496.
19. Ackoff, Russell L. et al., 1976, "The SCATT Report: Designing a National Scientific and Technological Communication System," Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press.
20. Boothroyd, Hylton, 1978, "Articulate intervention," London, Taylor & Francis.
21. Müller-Merbach, Heiner, 2007, "The Great Divide," OR/MS Today, Vol. 34, No. 2, pp. 20-21.

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