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Ethics in operations research and sustainable development
Author(s) -
Brans JeanPierre,
Kunsch Pierre L.
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
international transactions in operational research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.032
H-Index - 52
eISSN - 1475-3995
pISSN - 0969-6016
DOI - 10.1111/j.1475-3995.2009.00728.x
Subject(s) - sustainability , control (management) , face (sociological concept) , management science , sustainable development , ethical issues , computer science , engineering ethics , risk analysis (engineering) , process management , business , political science , sociology , economics , engineering , law , social science , ecology , artificial intelligence , biology
During the last 100 years, major social, economic, environmental and technical problems have arisen that today jeopardise mankind's very existence. The authors argue that operations research (OR) should be more strongly involved by developing models to face today's crucial challenges. OR should change drastically because it is traditionally involved mainly with optimisation problems, which are often counterproductive in the sense of ethical behaviour: new basic approaches are required. This paper provides some avenues on how to develop instruments for addressing mankind's sustainability problems, and for complying with ethical principles. It is proposed to have a mix of techniques, mainly: systems thinking, multi‐criteria decision‐making and dynamic control. A global framework, called ASMC (Adaptive, Systemic, Multi‐criteria, Control procedure), is proposed for developing these ideas. Some sustainable development applications are presented.