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Ethics in OR/MS: past, present and future

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Abstract

The pervasiveness and impact on society and on every day human life of technology has led to a growing awareness that science and technology cannot be considered above or beyond the realm of value judgements and hence of ethics. This is especially true for Operations Research/Management Science (OR/MS), that particular science which is concerned with methodologies for scientifically deciding how to design and operate man-machine systems in an optimal way, usually under conditions requiring the allocation of scarce resources. Here we try to give a historical account of the growing interest for ethics within the OR/MS community from its birth to present days. Starting from attempts to define models and codes of ethical behaviour in our profession, the OR/MS community has arrived at more fundamental questions about the ethical responsibility it faces in a world of growing inequalities and in which the ever greater stress that human activities impose on the environment puts at risk the very survival of human kind.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Statistics and OR, VUB, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Pleinlaan, 2, 1050, Brussels, Belgium

    Jean-Pierre Brans

  2. Centro Interdipartimentale Scienze per la Pace and Dipartimento di Informatica, University of Pisa, Largo B. Pontecorvo, 3, 56127, Pisa, Italy

    Giorgio Gallo

Authors
  1. Jean-Pierre Brans
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  2. Giorgio Gallo
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Correspondence to Jean-Pierre Brans.

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This paper appeared in 4OR 2, 95–110, 2004.

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Brans, JP., Gallo, G. Ethics in OR/MS: past, present and future. Ann Oper Res 153, 165–178 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10479-007-0177-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10479-007-0177-1

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