Research needs and the phenomena of decisionmaking and operations

An April 1984 workshop on research directions was sponsored by the Decision and Management Science Program of the National Science Foundation at the University of Texas at Dallas. One session concerned the relationship of research to phenomena in decisionmaking and operations. Nine presentations from workers in very diverse areas comprised the session. Together, they provide a very useful compendium of commonalities and differences in this important area of contemporary thought that offers much insight into future research directions. What follows was initially prepared by the nine presenters at the session, edited by the editor of this Transactions, distributed to all session presenters for their thorough review and commentary, and then revised for publication by the editor. It is our hope that this provides the research community at large with the results of a very useful dialog.