Merger memories: INFORMS turns 25

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the founding of INFORMS following the merger of the Operations Research Society of America (ORSA) and The Institute of Management Sciences (TIMS). Like most marriages, the merger process had its ups and downs and internal squabbles, particularly in the years leading up to and immediately following the big event on Jan. 1, 1995. We’ll get to that later. Today, 25 years after ORSA and TIMS tied the knot, there’s no question that the merger was a success as INFORMS stands much stronger than the sum of its two parts.

Although it took a while to smooth out the kinks and different cultures associated with the merger, INFORMS has much to celebrate as it carries not just the OR/MS banner, but also the analytics banner, forward into a new decade. By combining forces, INFORMS presents a united front, shared goals and a coordinated message to send out to the business and industry world. In addition, the solid financial footing INFORMS now enjoys allows the Institute to greatly expand its products and services, enhance its existing portfolio on several fronts and launch new initiatives, none more prominent than the decision to embrace the analytics movement. Along those lines, the Institute remade and then rebranded its spring conference as the “INFORMS Conference on Business Analytics & O.R.,” changing the focus from a largely academic exercise to a high-end, practitioner-oriented event aimed at analysts, managers and C-level execs that annually attracts more than a thousand attendees. In 2008, INFORMS published the first issue of Analytics magazine, an online-only publication whose readership now exceeds that of OR/MS Today.

To further cement itself as a leader in the worldwide analytics community, INFORMS boasts an Analytics Society whose membership quickly soared past a thousand; a continuing education program largely focused on analytics topics; and the Certified Analytics Professional (CAP®) and the Associate Certified Analytics Professional (aCAP) programs to help analysts separate themselves in the job market and to help companies find qualified candidates for their analytics teams.

On the academic side, INFORMS has added several journals to its world-class portfolio, bringing the total to 16, with a 17th approved by the INFORMS Board in 2019 and presently seeking its inaugural editor-in-chief. Meanwhile, on the meetings front, the 2019 INFORMS Annual Meeting in Seattle attracted more than 7,300 attendees, far and away an all-time record. INFORMS also launched several topic-specific conferences on healthcare and security, along with regional conferences around the country. In terms of outreach, INFORMS’ advocacy in D.C. program has made tremendous strides in the past few years introducing and promoting the Institute, its members and the greater OR/MS/analytics profession to decision-makers in government, particularly on the federal level, capped by an Analytics Summit in Washington, D.C.

It’s also worth noting that from 2007 to 2020, half the people elected by the membership to serve as president of INFORMS happen to be women, an indication of the Institute’s strong commitment to diversity and inclusion – a priority for 2020 INFORMS President Pinar Keskinocak.

Last but not least, all of INFORMS activities are now consolidated under the leadership of Executive Director Melissa Moore in a modern office complex located just minutes from the Baltimore/Washington International Airport and a short drive to Washington, D.C. 

In the Beginning…

To put the merger in perspective, let’s take a closer look at how it all began, as well as the “long and winding road” ORSA, TIMS and INFORMS took to get to where it is today.

Once the modern discipline of “operational research” (British spelling) played a pivotal role in helping the Allies defeat Germany in World War II – perhaps most famously by enhancing the methods used by the Royal Air Force to hunt, find and destroy enemy submarines and the strategic placement of radar – early practitioners in the United Kingdom and United States turned their O.R. skills and tools on peacetime problems in business, industry and society. As a result, on May 26, 1952, more than 70 individuals from academia, the military and corporate America founded ORSA to represent and promote the O.R. profession domestically and eventually abroad. The guest list included a who’s who of O.R., including Philip Morse and George Kimball. Within a year, the fledgling organization established a journal (Operations Research) and an annual meeting, which attracted a few hundred people.

“The best parts of the meetings were late night bull sessions in the cocktail lounge where students, faculty and practitioners argued and exchanged views,” recalls longtime ORSA, TIMS and INFORMS member Sid Hess [1].

But all was not cool in the OR/MS community. Given the diverse makeup, experience and expectations of the membership, differences of opinion quickly ran rampant regarding the direction the organization should take going forward. As explained by Andrew Vázsonyi, one of the first “associate” members of ORSA who passed away in 2003: “There was a feeling among [some of the members] back then that ORSA was too strongly oriented toward mathematics, that its leaders were just interested in military applications. ORSA was dominated by the Philip Morse and George Kimball crowd, people who were always talking about the things they did for the military during World War II. Many of us thought that ORSA needed another approach, something oriented toward management, but we didn’t think we could get the Morse crowd to change. It turns out we were right” [1].

The discord prompted several disenfranchised ORSA members to consider establishing another society that focused on business management rather than the military. Following a series of meetings on both coasts, a room full of economists, engineers, mathematicians, statisticians, astronomers, attorneys and at least one philosopher (C. West Churchman) met at Columbia University to ponder the possibility of joining forces under another banner: “management science.” This time the guest list included four future Nobel Prize winners and one future recipient of the National Medal of Science, George B. Dantzig – the “Father of Linear Programming” and a legendary figure in both the operations research and management science camps. Just 18 months after ORSA was created, The Institute of Management Sciences (TIMS) was launched [1]. 

Family Feud

Like two siblings who have much in common yet can’t seem to agree on anything, ORSA and TIMS went their separate ways, only to reunite later in life. In the 1970s, after a 20-year estrangement despite having many dual members, ORSA and TIMS realized that their commonalities often outweighed their differences, and thus began a series of joint activities across the spectrum, including joint meetings, journals, awards, committees, councils and yes, OR/MS Today [1]. Perhaps the most significant joint activity was the “annual meeting,” which was actually held two times a year. The TIMS/ORSA Joint National Conference was held in the spring; the ORSA/TIMS Joint National Conference was held in the fall. By the end of the decade, the fuzzy line that had historically distinguished ORSA and TIMS, and operations research from management science, had all but disappeared, prompting the first serious talks of merger.

“In the 1950s and ‘60s, the competition between the two organizations was almost unfriendly,” Hess explains. “Gradually those of us who lived and worked in the overlap – whatever that was – helped encourage cooperation” [1].

By the late 1980s and early 1990s, merger seemed inevitable, but it required more years of joint council meetings, merger committees, lobbying and a vote of the membership of both societies before ORSA and TIMS would officially unite as one. Dwindling membership in both ORSA and TIMS at the time was one of several factors propelling the merger movement; those in favor of merging argued that it would create not only a larger, stronger, more financially secure organization, but the combined clout would allow it to better promote and push its collective agenda to government policymakers, and industry and business decision-makers. Some supporters went even further, envisioning the merged organization would attract other kindred societies and individuals from mathematics, statistics and computer science to join INFORMS under a big, new, federation-like umbrella structure.

In addition, efficiencies and cost savings – a couple of hallmarks of the profession – were put forward as reasons to merge. A combined organization would need only one office, not two (at the time, ORSA was headquartered in Baltimore, TIMS in Providence, R.I.), and many duplicate staff positions could be eliminated through merger, resulting in significant cost savings.

A joint ORSA/TIMS Committee on Cooperation, chaired by John D.C. Little (pictured right), a past president of both ORSA and TIMS, was subsequently formed to explore the proposed merger, including pros and cons from both sides. In true OR/MS fashion, then-TIMS Council member Robin Keller chaired a subcommittee that considered the merger from a cost-benefit perspective (see the “Last Word” column).

The 1993 ORSA/TIMS Joint National Conference in Phoenix proved to be a pivotal moment in the merger movement. As then ORSA President Richard Larson noted in his editorial in the December 1993 issue of OR/MS Today, “The Phoenix ORSA/TIMS meeting was exciting … there was energy in the air focused around the proposed new structural form for our two societies, ORSA and TIMS. Many opinions were expressed, both in the hallways and in official meetings” [2]. Larson went on to describe a proposed plan in which ORSA and TIMS “would merge to become a new professional association, embracing the traditions and strengths of (both) and welcoming other professionals who share our vision.”

After inviting the joint membership to offer their views (much of which appeared in OR/MS Today), Larson concluded with these words: “We are the professional decision-problem solvers of the 21st century. Our services and products are in great and growing demand. The outside world sees no difference between operations research and management science. By merging, we can maintain and build up the separate strengths of ORSA and TIMS and at the same time firmly position ourselves for a growing future, a future having even greater research advancements and impacts upon the industrial and public sector worlds” [2]. 

Imagine INFORMS: It’s Easy If You Try

Four months later, in an April 1994 OR/MS Today editorial headlined simply “Imagine” (an ode to the Beatles song of the same name), Larson asked members to imagine a litany of possibilities with merger, including “a unified profession known worldwide for tackling industries’ and governments’ most difficult operational problems”; a society that, among other things, “has the resources to get our news stories in the national media,” “offers opportunities for lifelong learning,” “offers a range of services for ‘lone ranger’ practitioners” and “brings together the best of engineering and management solvers, thereby defining a new emerging field for the 21st century.”

Concluded Larson, still channeling John and Paul: “ORSA and TIMS, over many years, have worked together down the long and winding road to this critical juncture. Now it’s time to come together. Don’t just let it be. Don’t let me down. All together now, VOTE! VOTE! VOTE!” [3].

In the same issue, the late Carl M. Harris, a past president of ORSA and at the time a member of the OR/MS Board, wrote a lengthy op-ed in which he said, “I am now very confident that joining formally with TIMS is the right thing to do and is, in fact, particularly important at this time, as we all move through the computer and information revolution into the 21st century” [4].

Altogether, that April 1994 issue of OR/MS Today, published shortly before the merger vote, featured 20 pages about the merger that included a summary of the merger proposal by Little, a history of ORSA/TIMS cooperation by Robert Abrams, a copy of the constitution and bylaws of the proposed INFORMS organization, and seven pages of pro/con merger op-eds from various ORSA and TIMS leaders [5]. 

The Loyal Opposition

Of course, since we’re talking about operations researchers and management scientists, not everyone, perhaps most prominently the late Saul Gass, agreed that merger was a good idea. In a number of op-eds and letters to OR/MS Today, meetings (including the 1993 Phoenix conference) and other forums, Gass and others proudly and defiantly sought to defend and preserve the distinct legacies of operations research and management science. At the 1994 spring meeting in Boston, Gass, a former president of ORSA and an active member of TIMS, manned a fold-up card table with a “Dump INFORMS” sign. The table was covered with teabags. When asked, Gass said he was holding a modern-day Boston Tea Party because the impending merger would create a new organization without proper representation of his beloved fields. At the very least, Gass and other opponents of the merger insisted that the new organization’s name include “operations research.”

Ironically, ORSA had a two-tier membership: “full” members who could vote on important issues such as merger, and “associate” members who did not have voting privileges. After a little in-house wrangling, and just in time for the up-or-down measure on merger, all ORSA members were given the right to vote [see Last Word postscript here].

Meanwhile, back on the debate circuit, things became more heated. Christer Carlsson of Finland, a member of the TIMS Council from 1991-1993, recalls attending a joint meeting of ORSA/TIMS officers in 1993. Little chaired the meeting and summarized the pros and cons of a “joint organization.” According to Carlsson, the word “merger” was not mentioned because the proposal was a complex issue and the respective business offices were not sold on the idea nor were some members of both camps, particularly those on the ORSA side. Based on his notes at the time, Carlsson says a heated discussion ensued spiked with comments such as “this will never happen,” “there is no need” and “the Founding Fathers will not be happy,” which were followed by a few voices pointing out that there are more and better pro arguments than con arguments. The debate continued for a couple of hours.

Carlsson remembers he “tried to say something by raising my hand in the European fashion, but I was shouted down in the American fashion.” Finally, according to Carlsson, Little said something along the lines of, “Let’s hear from the European as he is neutral,” whereupon Carlsson said that since all the attendees were developers of decision theory, why not use what we teach and make a decision? He noted that all the arguments were on the table, so why not take a vote and make a decision? According to Carlsson, after the votes were counted, “everybody was surprised to see that there was a small majority in favor of a joint organization. That was not the end of the process,” Carlsson says, “but it was the end of the beginning” that eventually resulted in INFORMS. 

Members Cast Votes

After years of meetings, committees and debates devoted to merger, the issue was finally put to a vote of the ORSA and TIMS memberships in the summer of 1994. Both camps voted overwhelmingly in favor of merger – a whopping 85% of ORSA members who participated and 91% of TIMS participants [6].

As part of the merger vote, Little was elected the inaugural president of INFORMS and Al Blumstein – like Little, a past president of both ORSA and TIMS – was elected president-elect. Randy Robinson, chair of the OR/MS Board who was in line to become president of TIMS, was instead named the first executive director of INFORMS.

ORSA and TIMS board members whose elected terms were shortened by merger generally found places on the INFORMS Board, which was expanded to include representatives from focused INFORMS societies. Keller (pictured right), TIMS VP of Finance at the time, recalls that she and ORSA Treasurer Karla Hoffman basically flipped a coin to determine who would be the treasurer of INFORMS. Hoffman “won,” and Keller was appointed to the INFORMS Board as a founding Director-at-Large, serving as the Liaison for Education Cluster. As it turned out, Hoffman and Keller both went on to be elected president of INFORMS, Hoffman in 1999 and Keller in 2015.

As for Gass and the loyal opposition, they might have lost the war, but they won what was an important battle to them. Among more than 100 suggested names for the new organization, “Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences” or INFORMS, was the recommended choice by the Strategic Committee’s Subcommittee on Name and subsequently adopted by the OR/MS Board. For the record, the name was suggested by two members from California, Richard M. Bradford and Robert M. Saltzman. The name seemed to please almost everyone. 

What’s Next?

The vote to merge settled a decades-long debate, but it also raised a big question: What’s next?

In the immediate aftermath of the vote to merge, longtime leaders in both camps expressed optimism about INFORMS going forward while acknowledging that merger alone was not a silver bullet that would solve all the problems that confronted ORSA and TIMS.

“Now it’s our job to make OR/MS live up to its potential,” said Little in the August 1994 issue of OR/MS Today. “The outcome of the merger vote represents a lot of hard work and enthusiasm by a lot of people. It also shows that the members of both societies are ready to move forward in a new direction” [6].

“I think it’s most impressive how overwhelming the merger vote was in terms of a realization by the great majority of the members of both societies that we can do a much more effective job together than having to suffer some of the inefficiencies of the dual operations,” said Blumstein, who would serve as president-elect and then president of INFORMS. “It’s also important that we began to pay much more attention to the needs of the professional because the issues involved in the merger have taken an enormous amount of time and attention over the years” [6].

Robinson, whose job as executive director focused on blending the two business offices and cultures of ORSA and TIMS, said, “I believe this is the most important event for the OR/MS profession since the founding of TIMS and ORSA. I believe there are benefits beyond those anticipated by anyone” [6].

Even Gass, who opposed the merger, offered a conciliatory and positive note: “All of us should recognize that the times change, and we change with them. We all can help to make changes that better our profession and professional organization” [6].

In an editorial in the October 1994 issue of OR/MS Today titled “The Post-Merger Challenge,” then-TIMS President Mark Lembersky wrote: “INFORMS will need to add a collection of products and services for practitioners that make INFORMS membership in a practitioner’s self-interest. Belonging to INFORMS will need to be seen by practitioners as providing a real competitive advantage in their working environments to nonmembers. Ideally, membership will become critical for practitioners as well as academics” [7].

Optimism Runs into Reality

Despite the enthusiasm for INFORMS at the time, some of the key selling points of merger were slow to materialize. The combined membership of ORSA and TIMS, which totaled about 15,000 at the time of the merger, was reduced to about 12,000 once dual memberships were eliminated. Membership actually dipped down from there and drifted between 10,500 and 12,000 for the next 25 years, depending on the economy and the ebb and flow of members, particularly student members and new members. Last year, membership creeped past 12,000 for the first time since the merger, boosted by a record-setting Annual Meeting that drew more than 7,300 attendees, many of them first-time attendees and grad students.

As for the big tent theory, no kindred organization ever joined ORSA and TIMS under the INFORMS umbrella concept.

And as for efficiencies and cost-savings, INFORMS kept two offices open for many years following the merger. At first, the Baltimore-area office housed the “Corporate and Member Services” functions, while the Providence office focused on “Meetings and Publications.” By 2000, Corporate, Member, Publications and Subdivision Services were all located in the Baltimore-area office (Linthicum, Md.), leaving the Providence office with just Meeting Services. Providence staffers whose jobs didn’t involve meetings were given an opportunity to move and work at the Baltimore office. Attrition, retirement and telecommuting eventually led to the closing of a small Providence-area office in late 2011, more than 16 years after the merger. 

New Institute, Old Issues

In the years and decades following the merger, two key problems continued to haunt INFORMS as it did its predecessors. As noted, membership remained relatively stagnant. Even more perplexing was “the name issue.” Despite countless attempts at “branding” its product, the Institute still had not found an effective way to clearly define, let alone market, what its members do and why the world should care. More than 60 years after the field’s founding, and despite a well-funded “Science of Better” marketing campaign from 2003-2005, the terms “operations research” and “management science” didn’t gain much traction outside the walls of the OR/MS community. Was the field of OR/MS destined to be forever bewitched by a public and corporate world that neither understood nor appreciated its many contributions to business, industry and society?

The late David Hertz, who hosted the first TIMS planning meeting in his New York apartment in 1953, had a one-word answer: “nonsense.” His explanation, spoken in 1993 upon TIMS’ 40th anniversary and in the midst of the merger debate, still resonates today:

“In any long journey, detours are inevitable. Membership grew, we almost went broke. TIMS set out to bring the kind of science represented by operations research to the management world. Its members did so in many, many ways and I think it was successful. Today, you hear a lot of complaining from our members about a lack of recognition. That’s a bunch of bull. I don’t have any sympathy for those who complain. The people who do exceptional work are always recognized – with full professorships at major institutes, with major jobs in industry, with big appointments in government, with research grants.

“I think the problem is there are too many people who like to call themselves management scientists. There are 500,000 lawyers in this country. Are they all recognized? I believe a great deal can be done, but it’s not going to be done by complaining. In my opinion, we’re crying over the wrong issue. Recognition is not the issue. Good work is. You’ve got to understand the world of management, the managed and managing” [1].

More recently, the massive increase in data and computing power has made it not only possible but imperative for companies to take advantage of it to optimize their corporate decision-making and “compete on analytics.” That in turn has given rise to a whole new set of monikers such as “data scientist,” “decision scientist” and “analytics professional” to comingle with “operations researcher” and “management scientist,” further confusing the decades-old “name” issue while simultaneously opening up many new opportunities for INFORMS and its members. So how do I best describe, let alone market, myself and my profession in such a crowded space? How do I break through and reach decision-makers and policymakers who desperately need my unique skills but don’t seem to know or understand what I bring to the table? Led by 2019 INFORMS President Ramayya Krishnan, that’s the challenge INFORMS took on with its Advocacy in D.C. program mentioned earlier. Washington, D.C. – a short drive from INFORMS headquarters – presents a perfect, target-rich environment for all of the above. INFORMS is now vigorously introducing those decision-makers and policymakers to the unique capabilities of O.R. to “save lives, save money and solve problems.”

The future for INFORMS and the O.R. and analytics profession has never looked brighter. The world is full of interesting O.R. problems, and more appear every day. The only question is, who is going to get the call to solve them?

Acknowledgment

Portions of this article are updated from an earlier article by the author marking the 65th anniversary of the founding of ORSA, which appeared in the December 2017 issue of OR/MS Today. That version, including some passages and quotes, was itself based on published accounts of ORSA, TIMS and INFORMS that have appeared in OR/MS Today over the last 30 years, most notably articles on the 40th anniversaries of ORSA and TIMS in 1992 and 1993, respectively; John R. Hall’s “An Issue-Oriented History of TIMS” that appeared in Interfaces in 1983 (Vol. 13, No. 4, pp. 9-19); and the merger debate in OR/MS Today that led to the creation of INFORMS and the immediate aftermath (1993-1995).

The author thanks Robin Keller for her comments and suggestions on this current article; again thanks the late Saul Gass for his many comments and suggestions on earlier versions; and salutes the many other pillars of the profession who contributed their time, expertise, wisdom, service and leadership to INFORMS dating back to its ancestral roots, many of whom are quoted in this article. 

References

1. Horner, Peter, 2017, “History Lesson: The evolution of INFORMS,” OR/MS Today, Vol. 44, No. 1, pp. 22-27 (February issue).
2. Larson, Richard C., 1993, “Editorial: We Want to Hear from You!”, OR/MS Today, Vol. 20, No. 6, pp. 6-8 (December issue).
3. Larson, Richard C., 1994, “Editorial: Imagine,” OR/MS Today, Vol. 21, No. 2, pp. 6-8 (April issue).
4. Harris, Carl M., 1994, “Forum: A Response to Critics,” OR/MS Today, Vol. 21, No. 2, pp. 65-68 (April issue).
5. Little, John D.C.; Gross, Donald; Abrams, Robert; et al; 1994, various articles, OR/MS Today, Vol. 21, No. 2, pp. 56-73 (April issue).
6. Horner, Peter, 1994, “ORSA+TIMS=INFORMS: Society members overwhelmingly approve merger plan,” OR/MS Today, Vol. 21, No. 4, pp. 8-10 (August issue).
7. Lembersky, Mark R., 1994, “The Post-Merger Challenge,” OR/MS Today, Vol. 21, No. 5, pp. 6 (October issue).