International Journal of Operations & Production Management

Production/Operations Management: Research Process and Content during the 1980s

Andy Neely
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 Production/Operations Production/
Operations
Management: Research Management

Process and Content during

5
the 1980s
A n d y Neely
University of Cambridge, UK

Introduction
Production/operations management (P/OM), as a functional field of management,
has developed rapidly during the last 15 years. As consumers have become more
discerning and competition more intense, manufacturing organizations have
been presented with a wide variety of panaceas including; just-in-time(JIT),total
quality management (TQM), manufacturing resources planning (MRP II), flexible
manufacturing systems (FMS) and computer-integrated manufacturing (CIM),
all of which appear to fall in and out of favour with alarming regularity. In the
late 1970s the future for the P/OM community looked bleak and many prominent
US business schools were closing down their P/OM courses [1]. By the mid-1980s
Int Jrnl of Op & Prod Mnagemnt 1993.13:5-18.

the new industrial competition, particularly that from Japan, had heightened
industrial interest in P/OM to the extent that it was only the lack of qualified
teachers which was constraining business schools from offering new P/OM
courses[l,2].
What has happened, then, to the academic discipline of P/OM in the last 15
years? How has the field developed? Why has it developed so rapidly? What
effect has this had on research conducted by the members of the P/OM community?
How has their research changed and how is it likely to change in the future? After
addressing some of these questions and reviewing some of the papers, from both
sides of the Atlantic, which purport to provide research frameworks for P/OM,
all the papers published in the first ten volumes of the International Journal of
Operations & Production Management are categorized according to their research
content and process. The results of this categorization exercise are used to highlight
some of the interesting trends apparent in the P/OM research conducted during
the 1980s.

P/OM
Buffa[3] suggested that three overlapping phases of evolutionary development
in the field of P/OM could be identified. These are shown in Figure 1.
In the mid-1950s, while in its descriptive phase, P/OM was effectively synonymous
with the entire field of industrial management and elements from functional International Journal of Operations
disciplines as diverse as finance, marketing and personnel management were all & Production Management, Vol. 13
No. 1,1993, pp. 5-18, © MCB
included under the P/OM umbrella. By 1961, the year in which P/OM's descriptive University Press, 0144-3577
 IJOPM
13,1

phase ended[3], the P/OM community was beginning to disintegrate, with some of
its members leaving to establish their own functional fields of management. As
functional specialization became more popular those members of the P/OM community
who remained found themselves fighting for the survival of a discipline which had
been stripped of all but a few techniques: "time and motion study, plant layout, Gantt's
Int Jrnl of Op & Prod Mnagemnt 1993.13:5-18.

production control boards, the simple EOQ model, and simplistic descriptions of how
production systems worked"[3, p. 1].
Between 1960 and the late 1970s management science/operations research
(MS/OR) proved to be P/OM's saviour. Indeed when the first 25 years of the
Management Science Journal were reviewed it was found that production
management problems were consistently the most studied area (27 percent),
followed by finance (8 per cent) and marketing (6 per cent) [4]. However MS/OR
is not, in itself, P/OM and has, to a certain extent, proved to be a false prophet
for the field. By the mid-1970s most of the MS/OR techniques which had been
developed to solve traditional P/OM-type problems were being applied to problems
in all the functional fields of management and, as these MS/OR techniques became
general management tools, the members of the P/OM community found that once
again they had lost their distinctive competence.
By the early 1980s the future for P/OM was looking much brighter. New P/OM
journals, on both sides of the Atlantic, the Journal of Operations Management
in the US and the InternationalJournal of Operations & Production Management
in the UK, were first published in 1980. Miller et al.[1] observed that, in the US,
the decline in manufacturing competitiveness, particularly the shortcomings in
productivity and technological innovation, had led to a rapid increase in the level
of interest expressed in the field and that it was the lack of suitably qualified
teachers which was the limiting factor when setting up a new P/OM course. In
the UK a similar optimism seemed to sweep through the higher educational
 establishments and Voss[2] also argued that this was principally due to the now Production/
widely recognized new industrial competition, particularly that from Japan. Operations
At about the same time, companies which had been hard hit by foreign Management
competition were publicizing early results which later proved to be major
turnarounds, achieved through the application of modern production and operations
management techniques. For example, in 1983 Harley-Davidson held only 23 per
cent of the North American market share for heavyweight motorcycles. The 7
company had lost almost 77 per cent of its market share in 15 years because of
intense competition from Honda, Yamaha, Suzuki and Kawasaki. By the end of
1989 Harley-Davidson's market share was reported as 59 percent and still rising.
This impressive turnaround has been attributed to three basic operations
management principles; employee involvement, statistical operator control and
material-as-needed, the Harley-Davidson version of just-in-time (JIT) material
supply[5].
Buffa's third phase of evolution for operations management began in the early
1980s and he argues that this was when P/OM found itself emerging as a true
functional field of management[3]. Since then, advanced manufacturing technologies
such as just-in-time (JIT), total quality management (TQM), manufacturing
resources planning (MRP IT), flexible manufacturing systems (FMS) and computer-
integrated manufacturing (CIM) have all been subject to wide scrutiny. Voss[2]
points out that production/operations management is often confused with either
operations research or with technology but that it is now really "concerned with
Int Jrnl of Op & Prod Mnagemnt 1993.13:5-18.

the effective selection, application and management of new technologies." Accepting

that this is an accurate description of the true functional nature of P/OM then
one can hypothesize that research conducted in the field should have changed
considerably since P/OM's MS/OR phase. That is not to say that MS/OR techniques
will no longer be used but that MS/OR is now a functional discipline in its own
right and simply provides one set of tools that a P/OM researcher can use. One
of the objectives of this article is to test this hypothesis by examining all the
research published in the first ten volumes of the InternationalJournal of Operations
& Production Management. In order to do this it is first necessary to identify
what changes in P/OM research one would expect and then to develop a categorization
framework which can be used to identify whether such changes actually occurred.
In the next section some of the P/OM research frameworks which were published
in the early to mid-1980s will be reviewed and the major issues they raise identified.
A research categorization framework, based on the reviewed papers, will then
be proposed and used to categorize all the articles which were published in the
first ten volumes of the International Journal of Operations & Production
Management. The results of the categorization process will form the basis for a
discussion of how both the content and process of P/OM research has changed
since the late 1970s.

P/OM Research Frameworks

In the first edition of the Journal of Operations Management, Chase[4] presented
a superb paper with which to begin a review of P/OM research since the end of
 IJOPM its MS/OR phase. He examined and categorized the 134 P/OM-type papers which
13,1 had been published in volumes 9 and 10 of Decision Sciences, volumes 10 and 11
of AIIE Transactions, volumes 24 and 25 of Management Science and volumes
15, 16 and 17 of the InternationalJournal ofProductionResearch using a framework,
based on the two dimensions of research orientation and research emphasis,
similar to the one shown in Figure 2.
8 The research orientation dimension refers to the perspective which the researchers
have adopted. Chase argues that there are two basic categories within research
orientation. Either the research focuses on a narrow, well-defined problem and
is micro in orientation or it focuses on a larger and usually less well-structured
problem and is macro in orientation. The research emphasis dimension, on the
other hand, is used to describe the mechanization continuum. Chase argues that
because all production systems must consist of some combination of people, in
terms of their physiological, sociological and physical characteristics, and tangible
production equipment (facilities, machines, inventories, transportation devices,
etc.) then so must all P/OM research. In his categorization framework Chase
merely uses the end points of the mechanization continuum and is simply trying
to answer the question: does this research focus predominantly on people or
equipment?
Of the 134 articles which Chase reviewed and categorized he found that less
than 19 per cent described research in which a people emphasis had been adopted.
By far the majority of papers, 76 per cent, were based on research which had an
Int Jrnl of Op & Prod Mnagemnt 1993.13:5-18.

equipment emphasis and a micro orientation. The actual breakdown of the

categorizations is shown in Figure 3.
 Production/
Operations
Management

Chase[4, pp. 10] argues that these results, and the data which he had gathered
while reviewing and categorizing the papers, suggest that the "dominant research
Int Jrnl of Op & Prod Mnagemnt 1993.13:5-18.

strategy [up to that time] was problem identification, model formulation, and
mathematical and/or computer manipulation of the model." In many ways this
is not an unexpected finding, particularly when one considers that Chase was
reviewing articles which had been published in 1979 but which were probably
based on work conducted between 1975 and 1978, a period which falls well within
P/OM's MS/OR phase. More relevant to this discussion are Chase's thoughts both
on topics for future P/OM research and on how the imbalance towards an equipment
emphasis and a micro orientation could be redressed.
First, Chase suggests that, in the future, P/OM researchers should consider
people in terms of their psychosocial attributes rather than merely as machine
minders. Second he argues that more research with a macro orientation should
be undertaken. He points out that studies of inventory control and scheduling,
which made up 22 per cent and 37 per cent of reported research respectively,
were frequently micro in orientation and that they focused on local rather than
global optimization. Third, Chase points out that there appears to be a lack of
field-based research, particularly studies of a longitudinal nature. Fourth, that
he found no articles which reported research on purchasing and fifth, that papers
on manufacturing policy, one of the earliest P/OM subjects [6], rarely appeared
outside the Harvard Business Review. Basically, then, Chase appears to have been
arguing that increased effort should be expended on research which is macro in
orientation, incorporates the psychosocial attributes of people and is conducted
 IJOPM in the field. How do these recommendations compare with the thoughts of other
13,1 authors at that time?
Miller et al.[1] say that technology, managing fundamentals and strategic
orientation were the three predominant themes which emerged during a P/OM
workshop held in 1980. With respect to technology it was claimed that research
seemed to lag behind the industrial state-of-the-art hardware and that software,
10 or thoughtware, such as MRP, Kanban and management development in the
service sector, were all poorly understood. It was suggested that one way of
rectifying this would be for academics to conduct systematicfield-basedresearch
with an emphasis on collecting, generalizing and disseminating information on
industrial best practice. An integral part of such research would include investigation
both of how to implement new technologies and of what benefits could be expected
following the implementation.
The second major area which was highlighted was managing fundamentals,
or, as Peters and Waterman[7] later called it, sticking to the knitting. As Miller
et al.[1, p. 566] point out, "contrary to popular belief... Japanese auto plants are
more productive not because they are highly automated compared to ours but
because the Japanese have learned to achieve maximum performance from all
system components: equipment, information and, most of all, people." Once again
the emphasis is on field-based research, particularly that focusing both on people
issues and on system integration.
The third and final theme which was identified as important at the workshop
Int Jrnl of Op & Prod Mnagemnt 1993.13:5-18.

was strategic orientation. In support of Skinner [6] and those who have followed
him, Miller et al [1, p. 567] say that: "manufacturing capabilities, dependent as
they are on long lead times and major organizational upheavals, are more important
determinants of strategic options than the availability of capital resources. The
way things are done is not just a matter of style or even cost effectiveness; it
defines the product." Hence they argue that management decisions concerning
capacity planning, facilities location and multi-plant production need to be
examined to determine their strategic influence. In this case there is a need for
field-based research with a macro orientation.
Basically, then, both Chase and Miller et al. seem to have very similar views
of how P/OM research should have developed during the 1980s. The predominant
themes in the US appear to have been; increased field-based research, both in
terms of industrial collaboration and exploitation or implementation of existing
theory, increased emphasis on the human element, increased research scope,
increased research both on purchasing and on service operations and the
development of a strategic framework for P/OM. If these were the key US themes
at the beginning of the 1980s, how do they compare with the thoughts of authors
based in the UK?
In 1980 the UK's Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC) provided
funding for research into manufacturing through its Efficiency of Production
Systems (EPS) panel. Waterlow[8] reports that one of the aims of the EPS
programme was to encourage research which examined the relationship between
various manufacturing subsystems rather than examining isolated elements. He
 also explains that the members of the EPS panel regarded working with collaborating Production/
companies to be of fundamental importance and that the exploitation and Operations
implementation of existing ideas was seen to be more important than the Management
development of entirely new ones. Hence, in the early 1980s the SERC was forcing
researchers, at least those who wanted funding for their efforts, to explore real
macro rather than micro issues in conjunction with industry.
Waterlow[8, p.49] defines a manufacturing system as "comprising the equipment, 11
its layout and relationship to the products produced, work practices, planning
and control routines, order generation methods, and interfaces with design,
marketing and finance." Hence, although trends similar to those observed in the
US can be identified, namely the emphasis on collaborative macro research, the
parallel issue of increased research on soft systems does not appear to have been
explicitly included in the EPS programme. Indeed, Waterlow[8, p. 55] actually
says: "research on soft systems in the programme is likely to concentrate on how
to handle variety with short lead times, and to relate more closely to new process
and computer technologies (including software) in order to overcome some of the
inherent difficulties in this type of research. Topics which will be covered
superficially, or not at all, which are of potential interest to P/OM researchers,
are manufacturing policies, management styles, organizational structures, and
performance measurement." Of course, it may be that members of the SERC
assumed that such subjects were funded under research programmes sponsored
by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), formerly the Social Science
Int Jrnl of Op & Prod Mnagemnt 1993.13:5-18.

Research Council.
In 1982 the UK's Social Science Research Council (SSRC) commissioned a review
of current P/OM research. Lawrence [9] was given the task of studying research
on the man-management aspects of P/OM, particularly in terms of who became
production managers, what their expected career path was and what qualifications
they had, etc. Voss[2] examined the wider P/OM issues. As part of his study Voss
organized a two-day workshop which was attended by over 50 P/OM researchers
and teachers, and where a variety of papers on current research interests was
presented. Coupling information collected during discussions at the workshop
with the results of a wider survey Voss identified the ten major P/OM topic areas
which were of interest to UK academics in the early 1980s. These were:
(1) manufacturing policy;
(2) measurement of performance;
(3) international comparisons;
(4) technology (e.g. CAD/CAM, FMS, robotics, CIM);
(5) management of technological change;
(6) application of computers;
(7) production planning and inventory control;
(8) quality management;
(9) quantitative approaches; and
(10) service operations management.
 IJOPM In his paper Voss was keen to emphasize the managerial nature of P/OM. Specifically,
13,1 he argued that P/OM research was required in the following areas:
• manufacturing policy;
• management of technology;
12 • foreign manufacturing practices;
• service operations;
• purchasing and quality.
In summary, one can identify a number of parallel themes in the papers both
from the US and from the UK which were published in the early 1980s and
purported to present P/OM research frameworks. The major theme seems to
have been that P/OM was now emerging as a functional field of management in
its own right. Because of this, research on manufacturing policy (which could
provide an integrative theme for all P/OM research) was seen as fundamentally
important. In terms of the content of research, that is, the question of what should
be examined, the major themes appear to have been that emphasis on the softer
elements of P/OM should be increased and that more research of a macro nature
should be undertaken. When one considers the research process, that is how
should the work be conducted, the principal themes appear to be more collaboration
with industry and an increase in emphasis on implementation and exploitation
Int Jrnl of Op & Prod Mnagemnt 1993.13:5-18.

of existing ideas, rather than development of entirely new ones. In the next section
the research dimensions of content and process are used to develop categorization
frameworks. These frameworks were used to categorize all the articles which
were published in the first ten volumes of the InternationalJournal of Operations
& Production Management in an attempt to see if the P/OM community has lived
up to those early challenges which were laid down in the research frameworks
which have been reviewed. The results of the categorization process follow sections
on the development and use of the categorization frameworks.

Development of Categorization Frameworks

The major themes identified in the previous section can be split into two categories.
The first, which reflects the research scope or content, addresses the issue of
what is being studied. Is it macro or micro in orientation? Does it emphasize the
hard or soft elements of P/OM? This question of research scope can be examined
using a categorization framework similar to the one developed by Chase[4]. One
of the major advantages of using such a framework is that an approximate
comparison can be made between the two studies. However it is acknowledged
that, because different individuals have categorized the different papers, one
cannot assume that the results are directly comparable.
The second set of themes can be categorized according to the research process,
or style, adopted. In this case the question that is being addressed is: how (and why)
was this research conducted? Was it collaborative? Was the research designed to
 Production/
Operations
Management

13

produce new theories or to identify ways of exploiting existing ideas? Figure 4

shows both of these categorization frameworks with their associated keys.

Use of the Categorization Frameworks

As can be seen in Figure 4, each quadrant in each of the categorization frameworks
has been labelled 1,2,3 or 4. The quadrant labelled 4 is the one which most closely
Int Jrnl of Op & Prod Mnagemnt 1993.13:5-18.

represents the MS/OR-type research philosophies identified by Chase[4]. The

quadrant labelled 1 is the one into which an increasing amount of P/OM research
should fall if the predictions made by the authors of the P/OM research frameworks
which have been reviewed have come true. As far as was possible the following
guidelines were followed when categorizing each article.

Research Scope Categorization Framework

Research orientation. The research orientation is either macro or micro. All papers
which referred to an isolated problem, such as how to schedule a manufacturing
cell, or how to select a computer-aided design (CAD) system, were categorized
as having a micro orientation. An example of a paper having a macro orientation
would be one which focused on issues such as: how will the implementation of
a CAD system help to integrate the design and manufacturing function?
Research emphasis. Papers based primarily on managerial issues, such as the
JIT manufacturing philosophy, job design and quality circles were categorized
as having a soft emphasis. At the other extreme, reports which focused on machine
tools, layout of plant and statistical process control were classified as hard.

Research Style Categorization Framework

Research purpose If the objective of the research was to produce a new scheduling
algorithm or to design a new method of manufacture then the research purpose
was classified as developmental. If, on the other hand, the research reported
 IJOPM studies of existing technology or industrial practice and the emphasis was on
13,1 exploitation of the ideas then the research was categorized as exploitative.
Research team. If the research was conducted in partnership with industry
then it was classified as collaborative. If it was conducted in a laboratory with
little or no external input then it was categorized as isolated.
Thus during the categorization process the following four questions were being
14 addressed:
(1) Does the research have a broad or narrow orientation?
(2) Does the research predominantly focus on the soft or hard P/OM issues?
(3) Is the research pure or does it produce some practical conclusions which
will help industrialists to implement advanced manufacturing technologies?
(4) Is the research team multidisciplinary?
Because of the inherent subjectivity of this method, justifications for the categorization
of all the papers in volume 1, number 1 of the InternationalJournal of Operations
& Production Management have been provided below. It is hoped that this will
offer the reader some insight into the thought processes which accompanied the
categorization of the papers.

Justification for Categorizations

Paper 1: Hill [10]. The title of this paper, "Manufacturing Implications in Determining
Corporate Policy" suggests that the research will have a macro orientation. In
Int Jrnl of Op & Prod Mnagemnt 1993.13:5-18.

the first section of the paper, Hill explains that he asked two groups of senior
managers what they understood by the phrase "manufacturing policy". Hence,
one can conclude that the research team is multidisciplinary, that is, it involves
both academics and industrialists. By scanning through the rest of the paper it
can be seen that Hill goes on to examine why manufacturing directors do not get
involved with the development of manufacturing policy and ultimately a framework
showing how manufacturing policy issues are related to corporate decisions is
presented. This framework lies towards the soft end of the mechanization continuum
and is certainly designed for exploitation. Hence Hill's paper is categorized as 1
both for research scope and for research style.
Paper 2: Ray[11]. This paper, entitled "Assessing UK Industry's Inventory
Management Performance", immediately suggests collaborative or multidisciplinary
research, possibly through the use of surveys. On reviewing the paper, however,
it becomes apparent that Ray has based his paper on a variety of publicly available
reports. The topic is micro in perspective, in that Ray considers inventory alone.
The emphasis of the research, inventory management, is relatively hard and
while Ray presents a convincing case which emphasizes the importance of good
inventory management there are few practical suggestions as to what one should
do. Therefore this paper is categorized as a 4 both for research scope and for
research style.
Paper 3: Sassani and Rathmill[12]. The title of this paper is "An Evaluation of
the Effects of Skill Variety and Labour Mobility in the Operation of Industrial
Man/Machine Groups Using a Simulation Model". The synopsis specifically mentions
 collaboration with a company and operator skills. Hence one's immediate reaction Production/
is that the research team is multidisciplinary and the research emphasis is soft. Operations
However the research was actually based on a simulation in which it has been Management
assumed that the humans are merely machine minders. So the initial research
emphasis categorization of soft is changed to hard. Sassani and Rathmill say that
their simulation model was useful for the managers in the firm, but that a high
level of skill was required before one could use it. Hence the research purpose 15
appears to have been developmental rather than exploitative. Finally the problem
addressed was that of how to assign workers to machines which in itself is a fairly
specific and hence micro problem. The final categorizations for Sassani and Rathmill's
paper, then, are a 4 for research scope and a 2 for research style.
Paper 4: Wright[13]. In his paper, Wright argues that purchasing is a somewhat
neglected function which has been ignored both by academics and by industrialists.
The paper is abstract, developmental and the research is isolated. Hence it is
categorized as a 4 for research style. In terms of research scope the paper is macro
in orientation and fairly soft, and hence is categorized as a 1.
Paper 5: Fortuin[14]. Fortuin's paper, "The All-time Requirement of Spare Parts
for Service after Sales: Theoretical Analysis and Practical Results", focuses on
the fairly narrow or micro problem of identifying the all-time requirement for
replacement components. He develops a mathematical model and presents data
from an "average case". The paper is categorized as 4 both for research scope
and for research style.
Int Jrnl of Op & Prod Mnagemnt 1993.13:5-18.

Paper 6: Hollier[15].The title of this paper, "The Grouping Concept in Manufacturing",

suggests that the research emphasis will be hard and this proves to be the case.
In his conclusions Hollier suggests that "a wider view should be taken of the
concept of grouping in the design and operation of production systems as a major
step in simplifying their complexity"[15, p. 77]. Hence the orientation of the research
is macro. This gives a final classification for the research scope of 3. The research
style is categorized as a 3. It is isolated because Hollier is using his own opinions
to explain the concept of grouping and exploitative because the paper is written
in a style which explains the concepts and benefits of grouping.

Results from the Categorization Process

Figures 5 and 6 show the broad trends during the 1980s in terms both of the
content and of the process of the P/OM research published in the International
Journal of Operations & Production Management (IJOPM). At the beginning of
the decade, as Chase[4] suggests, there was a tendency to conduct, or at least
report, research on hard topics with a micro orientation. (Seventy-three per cent
of papers published in volume 1 of the IJOPM fell into this category. This is
comparable with the figure of 76 per cent that Chase reports.) However, over the
following few years, more research on softer and macro topics was reported and,
by the middle of the decade, articles which focused on the macro/soft P/OM topics
were more common in the IJOPM than those which focused on micro/hard issues.
With respect to the research process the picture is somewhat less clear.
Isolated/developmental research appears to be the most common. In fact, over
 IJOPM
13,1

16
Int Jrnl of Op & Prod Mnagemnt 1993.13:5-18.

the ten-year period, 41 per cent of papers published in the IJOPM fell into this
category. Next most common is collaborative/developmental research (25 per
cent), followed by collaborative/exploitative (18 per cent) and finally isolated/exploitative
(16 per cent). However, as can be seen in Figure 6 the research processes vary
substantially on an annual basis and it appears that the choice of research process
has not been subject to the same pressures as research content. Perhaps this is
because the research process adopted is a question of personal preference, while
the research content is subject to the current mindset of the members of a research
community. It is, of course, unrealistic to suggest that any one research process
is better than any other. It is vital that, as a community, P/OM researchers develop
techniques which can be exploited, but at the same time if there were no pure
research then no new techniques would be generated. In fact if there were no
pure research the role of the members of the P/OM community would be to report
and disseminate information on existing best practice, a role which one could
argue might be better suited to journalists than academics.
 Conclusions Production/
The principal purpose of this article was to examine how the radical changes Operations
which have taken place in the P/OM field during the last 15 years have affected Management
both the content and process of the P/OM research reported in the IJOPM. After
describing P/OM's evolutionary development and identifying the predicted changes
in P/OM research all of the papers published in the first ten volumes of the
InternationalJournal of Operations & Production Management were categorized 17
according to the research which they reported. The data generated from this
exercise showed that while there was a steady trend during the 1980s towards
increased macro/soft research and decreased micro/hard research, there were no
similar trends with respect to the research processes used.
One issue which has not yet been addressed is the question of the future of
P/OM research. In 1980 Chase [4] wrote:
Research on research is often a perilous undertaking, with the list of caveats exceeding the list
of results. This paper is no exception. Small sample sizes and judgement calls do not provide
a feeling of security, and proposing what an entire field "should" consider smacks of hubris and
perhaps a little glue sniffing.
It is freely acknowledged that these comments apply to this article. Practical
results are limited, as is the sample size, because only papers published in the
IJOPM have been included. Because of this one could argue that the results
reported reflect the editorial policy of the journal and do not relate to developments
in the P/OM field as a whole. As a counter-argument one could suggest that the
Int Jrnl of Op & Prod Mnagemnt 1993.13:5-18.

papers published in the IJOPM should be reasonably representative of P/OM

research as a whole and that little, if anything, would be gained by repeating the
same process with different journals. In the end, however, the important point is
not so much the results reported but the issue which they raise. During the 1980s
the amount of research with a macro/soft content appears to have increased at
the expense of that with a micro/hard content as predicted in the P/OM research
frameworks reviewed. Why then has the same not happened with respect to the
collaborative/exploitative research process? Is it because the choice of research
process is a function of personal preference? Is it because conferences, papers
and seminars often focus on the issue of research content rather than the process
used? Perhaps one of the key questions for the 1990s is not only what but also
how P/OM research should be conducted?

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