In the last issue of AIROnews, Marc Pirlot, President of the Belgian OR Society, made a “plea for the (small) national OR Societies”. In particular, referring to the question “what can be nowadays the role of the national societies?’ put during the meeting of the presidents of the OR societies within EURO at the last EURO Conference in Barcellona, he made a good point proving that there are, indeed, good reasons for maintaining OR societies organised on a national basis. Although I find the distinction he makes between “small” and “big” OR societies rather meaningless (all OR societies within EURO are “small”, that is of comparable, rather limited, size, the only exception being the British OR society with a membership of 2,900), I share his views concerning the multiple advantages for our OR community of having national societies to do the job that EURO does not and could not in any case do.

Objectives and activities
In an article with the title “OR in Europe: Facts about EURO member societies”, which appeared in EJOR (Vol.87, No.3, 1995, pp 424-429), I tried to present facts about the status of the OR Societies, members of EURO, based on a questionnaire addressed to the Societies. The facts refer to membership, activities (publications, conferences etc.), objectives of societies, relationship with EURO, financial status etc.

In particular, the survey showed that all societies share more or less the same objectives, that is, to promote academic and practical OR, to boost the interest on OR in the country, to bring together interested people of academic and industrial or management sides, to support educational activities devoted to OR, to expand services offered to the members of each society, and to foster links with the international community. In order to fulfil these objectives, societies publish information bulletins and/or scientific journals on OR theory and practice and organise national OR conferences (and, in some cases. joint conferences with other OR societies or with other national scientific societies), seminars and lectures, EURO Conferences, EURO Summer Institutes and EURO Mini Conferences. Some of the societies conduct surveys on OR utilisation on a national scale, give their members the opportunity to participate in working groups, professional meetings and social events, organise special events for young scientists, award prizes and medals, take action to promote the co-operation between industry and universities, publish monographs and other publications, give careers' information and organise recruitment fairs, offer research or community OR sponsorships and have library facilities. The above list of possible activities, complemented with some more imaginative/innovative ones (such as the ones proposed by Marc), form an armamentarium that may assist a society to attain its objectives. To what extent these will be achieved is a matter of the means that a society disposes of. Here is that certain difficulties and some quite serious problems arise.

How to “fuel” an OR society
Talking with friends actively involved in the running of OR societies (presidents and members of the executive committee) I have concluded that two major problems seem to be a common “topos” for most of them: the first refers to the availability of younger colleagues to participate and contribute to the activities of OR societies. The second one is a problem of meeting the administrative and other costs of the societies. Concerning the availability of younger colleagues, it seems that it is becoming more and more difficult to involve new and active members, particularly among younger OR generations, in order to enrich the executive committees or other instruments of OR societies, e.g. working groups. It seems as if younger colleagues are less and less willing to participate in the administration of OR societies and play an active role in existing or new activities. I will call this phenomenon “privatisation”, as opposed to the “socialisation” characterising older generations, who would find only natural to be socially active and disposable for collective work, including active participation in scientific societies. As for the problem of the increasing difficulty to meet the costs of running an OR society and financing its activities, this becomes more and more important as the main (or sole in some cases) source of income of most societies, that is subscriptions, is not sufficient, sponsoring is not available anymore to the extent it used to be and other sources of income are becoming also more and more scarce. To give an example, the Hellenic OR society has for many years relied, among others, on income generated by seminars either directly (fees paid by participants themselves) or indirectly (financial support by the government for non-paid participation of civil servants). For various reasons (seminars offered by newly appeared competitors, changes in governmental practice etc.), this income has been decreased to a very considerable extent in the last 2-3 years.

In need for a new culture
How to address these problems? The answer is not easy. It depends, of course, on the specific conditions prevailing in the country, in general, and the national OR community, in particular. Roles, means, practices should be reconsidered and re-engineered. Incentives should be offered to the younger OR generations to get involved in the society’s activities. Active involvement of experienced people is indispensable. The need for shaping a new culture appears, which will revitalise and create new perspectives for the societies. This new culture would not challenge the existing objectives of the societies. These and the necessity for the survival of national OR societies remain out of doubt. However, what the new culture should not miss anyway is the incorporation of new technologies in the society’s means and practices: why, for example, not publish our journals in electronic form only? This would reduce dramatically our publishing costs while increasing the number of the journals’ recipients! Why not having Working Groups meetings and other activities being performed by way of Internet? New approaches, new technologies and, of course, old, well-tested ingredients (like the willingness to be associated and work together with other people in order to promote society’s ideals for human progress) seem to be needed for a new culture for our OR societies. Finally, the role of EURO is extremely important. EURO is actually “fuelling” national OR societies by involving them in the organisation of EURO events, like EURO Conferences, EURO Summer Institutes, EURO Mini Conferences etc. There are also some more things, by which EURO’s support to our societies might be increased. For example, EURO may co-ordinate our efforts to introduce more collaborative OR research projects in the Programmes financed by the European Union.
 
Prof. Costas PAPPIS
University of Piraeus,
Dept of Industrial Management,
80 Karaoli and Dimitriou Str.,
GR - 18534  Pireaus  (Greece)
Tel: +301-4222060
Fax: +301-4179064
pappis@unipi.gr

This article has been published in the AIROnews  n°4/97, and is part of an AIRO initiative taken after the meeting of national ORS Presidents during the EURO Conference in Barcelona, July 1997.