Bulletin 106, September 99 

I will try to avoid unnecessary repeats of facts, statements, and dilemmas that have been already asserted in the previous comprehensive discussion. The contribution will start from the following premise: the position and activities of a professional society such as OR society are mainly influenced by the global position of the country in the international relations as well as by the level of political, economic, and cultural development. The statement is an obvious and self-understanding one. In this discussion it implies that we have to make a clear distinction between the countries which are within EC (there are only 15 out of a total of 46 countries, including some states from the former Soviet Union), and those which are not. I will present some Yugoslav experience and phenomena which sometimes were inconceivable and nowadays still are incomprehensible for many. I will express exclusively my personal feelings and nobody else is responsible for them. Accents will be put on political, economic, cultural and historic aspects of differences.

Political aspects

Many rights, obligations and responsibilities of national OR societies result from the fact that the country is (or is not) a member of some international global or regional political or military association. These associations are established to promote or protect the interests of the most important, strongest member or a couple of the strongest ones. Of course, there exists always a synergy effect, i.e. very often all members do have benefits as members of the association. However, the experience shows that in the case of serious conflicts of interests the decisions are made on the basis of balance of power when the most powerful ones can dictate their conditions.

At first sight it seems that nonprofit and especially scientific international associations do not obey the previous rule. International associations of operations research and similar disciplines are not too important from profit and high technology point of view. Their mission is international scientific cooperation, exchange of ideas and the latest scientific results, which are not secret. They are not profit oriented; they do not have a serious impact on strategic resources, geo-strategic or political issues. One could conclude that they are not interesting to politicians, and creators of new world order and are not subject to their decision. Unfortunately, the Yugoslav experience proved that this does not hold.

Yugoslav scientists shared the fate with the Serbian people which was imposed by UN Security Council sanctions in 1991 (based on information and reports which appeared to be counterfeited and false). Besides the other difficulties in which the Serbian nation was, scientists were faced with the following specific problems:

1. all international research projects were canceled and any kind of scientific or professional cooperation with Yugoslav institutes or individuals was forbidden by western governments,
2. deliveries of scientific journals (which, by the way, had been prepaid), books, and any kind of scientific information to Yugoslav individuals or libraries were prevented, even private letters were not permitted from some so called democratic countries,
3. access to internet was made impossible,
4. participation of Yugoslav scientists to international conferences was forbidden,
5. publication of scientific papers written by Yugoslav authors was forbidden (even EJOR canceled the publication of Yugoslav papers and an invited review was unwillingly published without author's country nor address).

Such a situation forced many researchers to leave the country, our libraries became deserted, and the necessary infrastructure for scientific and research work was destroyed. OR workers in Yugoslavia were in slightly "better" position compared to their colleagues because of the support given by individuals from EURO council and EURO EC and from IFORS.

Who made the decisions which made damage to Yugoslav operational research? It is sure that EURO council, EURO EC, individuals from EURO did not. Neither Elsevier as a publisher made a decision to refuse Serbian papers. The decisions were made by somebody else who is far from OR and science.

Economic aspects

Macroeconomic conditions in the country prevail in the definition of the main interests, problems and research topics of operations researchers. In developed countries with a relatively stable economy there exist OR problems, the interest for their solving as well as possibilities for solving them. Optimization problems in production planning or environmental issues may be typical examples. However, in less developed countries such problems may not be interesting. Priority problems in eastern and central European countries are quite different. They are faced with problems of economic transition, privatization and radical reforms. Possible benefits gained by political influence on strategic decisions may be very often by an order of magnitude greater than savings obtained by optimization methods. Unfortunately, as a rule, such decisions are not based on rational analyses.

The main problems are in the question how to start the economy, which has been destroyed by international blockade, not in questions like how to design the optimal facility layout for the plant, which is not working in any case. Who will care about the possible savings of a few percent when production capacities are used less than fifty percents, at a time when business condition are changing turbulently?

Cultural aspects

Research interests in organizational culture have raised in the last two decades. The causes are in the need for efficient solving of management and decision making problems in complex organizations. A successful implementation of new technologies, new management styles or new information system requires the understanding, respect and only feasible changing of organizational culture which is dominantly determined by national culture. Instead of elaborating this issue, I will cite some parts of my address at the opening session of 4th Balkan Operational Research Conference, Thessaloniki, 1997.

"… These days, Thessaloniki is the center of Balkan operations research and at the same time it is the cultural capital of Europe… Models and methods from OR are intended to assist decision-makers (engineers, economists, managers, and politicians) to find good or better ways, we say optimal solutions, of performing their jobs. The objective in practice is usually greater efficiency, lower cost, better customer service, and so on. However, we experience that OR projects often fail in practice and so-called optimal solutions are neither accepted nor applied in practice. Decisions, especially important decisions, are rarely made on wholly objective grounds and rational analysis… I believe that OR workers should be aware of these facts and that they have to have an understanding of the whole subject, especially of cultural factors which influence so much our decisions. Understanding of decision-makers attitudes, their values, objectives and goals should be the first step in OR methodology. Professional OR workers have to have education and skills for identifying the main cultural characteristics of the organization for which they are working. They must be aware that there exist social communities in which instead of traditional OR objectives (greater efficiency, lower cost, greater profit and so on) some other quite different values may be (are) preferred. Very close to the place of our conference, there is a famous exhibition of treasures from Holly Mountain Athos. Athos has been playing an important role in the history of all Balkan nations and their cultures. The famous Serbian bishop Nikolay Velimirovic wrote the following sentences about Athos between the two world wars: "That is kingdom free from crown, state free from army, country free from women, wealth without money, wisdom without school, kitchen free from meat, prayer without cease, bond with heaven without break, prey to Christ without tiredness, death without mourning. "

Tradition

The position and influence of a professional society in a country depend on historic heritage and tradition. In some countries there is a long tradition of numerous different societies, in others only a few professional societies have a long tradition. Some politic systems stimulate the existence of professional societies, others prevent or try to adapt them to goals which are not entirely professional. Yugoslav experience may be interesting.

In the former Yugoslavia, which consisted of six republics, it was very difficult and practically even impossible to establish a new professional society at the level of a country. According to the Constitution from 1974, each republic should form its society and then these societies may build their association. This was the reason why Yugoslav operational researchers formed in 1982 a section within ETAN (the Yugoslav society for electronics, telecommunication, automation and nuclear technique) which already existed.

This section was needed for international cooperation and recognition of Yugoslav operational research. In other words, one can say that the need for international cooperation forced us to establish some kind of a national OR society. Yugoslav independent OR society was established from the OR section of ETAN in 1994.

It is curious that the first Yugoslav national OR conference SYMOPIS had been held eight years before the OR section within ETAN was formed and that the national OR journal YUJOR had been published three years before establishing independent YU ORS. Our main activities have been performed within SYMOPIS and later YUJOR. The same people are in SYMOPIS program Committee, YUJOR Editorial Board and YU ORS. We have succeeded in realizing many successful activities without a formal ORS (e.g. in mid-eighties we published the dictionary of OR terminology which encompassed OR terms in four main world languages and languages of all Yugoslav nations and two national minorities). All this was possible only on account of enthusiastic work of many volunteers.

Concluding remarks

In my opinion, our experience favors the attitude that we need national ORS. The support that we have obtained from EURO and IFORS, especially from individuals from EURO and IFORS, shows that we also need international associations. Participation of a national ORS in an international association is very important and mutually useful.

A real impact of operations researchers may be there where they are acting and this is very much influenced by national characteristics. The main activists within ORS are volunteers who think that through their work they contribute to the development and welfare of their nation. This volunteering work within national ORS justifies answering the question "what does a member obtain from ORS" by a counterquestion: "what can an operational researcher do through the ORS to contribute to the solving of country problems?"

Prof. Mirko VUJOSEVIC

University of Belgrade,
Faculty of Organisational Sciences,
Jove Llica 154,
YU - 11000 Belgrade (Yugoslavia)

Tel: +381 11 465 855
Fax: +381 11 461 221
evujosev@ubbg.etf.bg.ac.yu

This article has been published in the AIROnews n°1/99, and is part of an AIRO initiative taken after the meeting of national ORS Presidents during the EURO Conference in Barcelona, July 1997.