20th Anniversary of JOM: an editorial retrospective and prospective

• Published date: 01 February 2002
• Author: J Meredith
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1016/S0272-6963(01)00082-1
• Date: 01 February 2002

Journal of Operations Management 20 (2002) 1–18

Introduction: 20th Anniversary of JOM:

an editorial retrospective and prospective

20th Anniversary of JOM: and editorial retrospec-

tive and prospective

This issue marks the beginning of Vol. 20 of the

Journal of Operations Management (JOM), though it

has been more than 20 years since it began publication

in August 1980 under the brave editorship of Lee Kra-

jewski. As most operations management (OM) faculty

are aware, there were a few times when JOM looked

like it might not survive, due to lack of funds and spon-

sorship commitments by both societies and deans. But

it did survive, due to the efforts and tenacity of a few

dedicated people in our field, and it is now recognized

as being among the elite group of top 20 US business

journals, joining the ranks of Management Science in

quantitative methods, Strategic Management Journal

in strategy/policy, Journal of Marketing Research in

marketing, Journal of Finance in finance, Academy

of Management Journal in management, Accounting

Review in accounting, and such eminent others (see

Table 1 in Academy of Management Journal 43 (6)

(2000) 1130–1141).

On such an historic occasion, I thought it would

be interesting to see what the previous editors now

thought about the field and its development over the

years, as well as research and publication in our field,

especially in JOM. I, thus, got in touch with as many

of the previous editors as I could, as well as the next

editor (Rob Handfield, North Carolina State Univer-

sity), to see if they would contribute their wisdom to

this joint editorial. Although I could not get input from

them all, I did get some very worthwhile comments,

which I share with you here.

First, however, let me review who the editors

and early associate editors have been over the last

20 volumes. As noted, Lee Krajewski at Ohio

State University was the initial editor for Vol. 1 in

1980, with the following associate editors: Vince

Mabert, Jack Meredith, Ken Ramsing, Larry Ritzman,

Randall Schuler, and Earle Steinberg. Lee continued

as editor until Vol. 3, No. 3 in May 1983 when Earle

Steinberg at the University of Houston took over,

with new associate editors D. Clay Whybark and

Roger Schroeder. After about a year, Earle joined

Touche Ross & Co., but stayed on as editor through

Vol. 7, No. 2 in October 1987. During a prolonged

editor-search hiatus, Lee stepped back in, along with

Gene Woolsey as co-editor, to publish Nos. 3 and 4

of Vol. 7, getting that combined issue out a year later,

in December 1988, and then Vol. 8, No. 1 in Jan-

uary 1989. At that point, Ron Ebert at University of

Missouri, Columbia took over as editor, with Paul M.

Swamidass as associate editor, publishing the second

issue of Vol. 8 in April 1989. Ron continued as editor

through Vol. 10, No. 4 in October 1991.

After Ron, Art Hill and Tom Hoffmann at the Uni-

versity of Minnesota helped JOM get on more finan-

cially solid ground by arranging for Elsevier Science

Publishers to take over the publication of the journal

starting with Vol. 11 in March 1993. Tom and Art also

appointed a large set of associate editors to help them

in their editorial duties: R.D. Banker, W.L. Berry, K.A.

Brown, A. DeMeyer, J.A. Fitzsimmons, J.R. Freeland,

J. Jaikumar, S. Kekre, R.E. Markland, J.R. Mered-

ith, R. Narasimhan, L.P. Ritzman, W. Robinson, A.V.

Roth, D.A. Samson, G.D. Scudder, and F.B. Talbot.

They also appointed an impressive editorial advisory

board consisting of 53 well-known eminent OM schol-

ars. Tom and Art finished their editorial turn at the end

of Vol. 12 in June 1995.

With the solid footing given to the publishing

activities (e.g. finances, printing, subscription corre-

spondence, production, shipping) of JOM by Elsevier,

0272-6963/02/$ – see front matter © 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

2Introduction/ Journal of Operations Management 20 (2002) 1–18

thanks to Tom and Art, my duties were mainly lim-

ited to editorial direction, with occasional promotion.

I largely continued the associate editors and advisors

I inherited from Tom and Art, making minor changes

over the years as circumstances dictated. Also, Art

continued his involvement with JOM for a few more

years as our Tutorials Editor. The first issue of Vol.

13 appeared in July 1995 and my contract with Else-

vier was originally scheduled to terminate in January

2000. However, I was asked by Elsevier to continue

for two more years, and agreed, so now my final issue

(of papers I processed) will be Vol. 20, No. 6 at the

end of 2002. However, Rob Handfield will start taking

all new submissions starting this January, so 2002 is

a transition year for both of us. Adopting Rob’s new

policy of requiring that paper revisions be completed

within a year, I will continue to handle the revisions

of papers I processed until the end of 2002.

We start with the past, our first editor, Lee Krajew-

ski, and finish with Rob Handfield, our future editor

for a prospective on what is in store for JOM.

J. Meredith

Babcock Graduate School of Management

Wake Forest University, P.O. Box 7659,

3109 Worrell Professional Center, Winston-Salem

NC 27109, USA

Tel.: +1-336-758-4467; fax: +1-336-758-4514

PII:S0272-6963(01)00082-1

Reflections on operations management research

Abstract

It has been more than 18 years since I stepped down as

the founding editor of the Journal of Operations Manage-

ment (JOM). I recall the feeling—bittersweet, but mostly

sweet. Now we commemorate Jack Meredith’s “retirement”

as the editor of JOM. Jack has done a great service to the

profession while editor of JOM. I am sure that he has sim-

ilar feelings of reluctance to turn over the reins and let the

parade pass, however, I am also sure that he joins me in

expressing confidence that Rob Handfield will do an out-

standing job as the new editor.

The first issue of JOM came out in August 1980. As

expressed in my inaugural editorial, the Journal was to sat-

isfy three basic needs: (1) enhancement of interdisciplinary

research, (2) encouragement of research into real problems

faced by operations managers, and (3) put the word man-

agement back into operations management. What prompted

the American Production and Inventory Control Society

(APICS) to sponsor a journal devoted to addressing those

three needs? The answer requires a brief review of his-

tory. What follows is my interpretation of various events in

our past that, no doubt, are jaded by own experiences and

opinions.

1. The beginning

In the 1950s, our profession was highly descrip-

tive in nature, building upon the early works of Adam

Smith, Charles Babbage, and Frederick Taylor (Buffa,

1980). The field of operations management as defined

by the early textbooks was also broad. Text titles of-

ten used the words “industrial management” and the

contents included chapters on personnel management,

finance, marketing, organization, and general manage-

ment. Research was limited to time and motion stud-

ies, plant layout, simple EOQ models, and descriptive

reports of how production systems actually worked.

In the 1960s, a major change took place in our

profession. As Buffa (1980) puts it, the savior that

rescued the field from extinction was the develop-

ment of Management Science/Operations Research

(MS/OR). It provided the scientific methodology that

opened the door to a more rigorous attack on re-

search issues, and it provided us with researchable

topics for many years to come. The tools were pow-

erful but the models often exceeded our capability to

solve them. Nonetheless, we found ingenious ways to

solve complicated problems by devising heuristics or

by boiling down a non-linear equation into a set of

simple-to-calculate linear rules. We were enamored

by the potential for these tools and sought to solve all

of production management’s problems with them.

2. A revelation

In the 1970s, we received a wake-up call. Armed

with the MS/OR tools, we sought “tractable” prob-

lems that the tools could solve. We shied away from

problems with messy behavioral implications: our so-

lutions were exact and our objective functions were

clear—often to minimize costs. We built upon other