Talk:Behavioral operations management

Requested move 6 March 2020

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

Behavioral operations research → Behavioral operations – Propose to rename the article Behavioral Operations, and refer to Behavioral Operations Research and Behavioral Operations Management only as alterantive names in the first introduction sentence. Whilst Operations Research and Operations Managment are indeed two different fields with very high overlap, the differences with respect to behavioral research are completely blurred. For instance, is behavioural research on supply chains, the knapsack problem, the newsvendor problem, human factor engineering or the bullwhip effect Behavioral Operations Research or Behavioral Operations Management? It probably depends whether one asks an OR or OM researcher; i.e. the naming is a matter of personal preferences. Therefore Behavioral Operations has been established as neutral term, for instance in the perhaps most influential theory paper on this topic by Gino & Pisano (2008), as well as a recent literature review by by Dohan et al. (2020). Both articles are published in Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, the third best journal in the field (Management Science and Operations Research do not publish such kind of reviews).

TPape (talk) 21:26, 6 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Support per WP:CONCISE. To be clear: Most related articles are titled with lowercase "operations", "management", "science" etc so "operations", not "Operations". Probably would want an R at too. 85.238.91.68 (talk) 04:29, 7 March 2020 (UTC)  struck 85.238.91.68 (talk) 05:28, 8 March 2020 (UTC)


 * Support per above. Including the lower-case O. Primergrey (talk) 19:06, 7 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose: is a type of, not a type of . The more well-accepted term is "", regardless of what someone may have said in some relatively recent journal articles (neither of which is so highly cited as to be validly interpreted as revolutionizing the field). The same goes for "". These fields of work have been around for a long time. Note, for example, that one of Donohue's top-most highly cited papers was published in the Journal of Operations Management and was entitled "Behavior in operations management: Assessing recent findings and revisiting old assumptions". —BarrelProof (talk) 20:00, 7 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Research is (or should be) a type of scientific operation but that's by the by.
 * The article only uses standalone "behaviorial operations" once (in the lede), but it's used three times in the titles of references. "Behavioral operations research" is used nine times, and "the study of behavioral operations" once. That use is telling: "the study of behavioral operations research" would mean something else. So there must be a difference between behavioral operations, and the research and study of them. Like the difference betweeen a method and methodology.
 * For these reasons I'm striking my support !vote. 85.238.91.68 (talk) 05:28, 8 March 2020 (UTC)


 * Data. The term "Behavioral Operations Research" (BOR) has 186 hits on Google Scholar, "Behavioral Operations Management" (BOM) has 860 hits, but "Behavioral Operations" 3,270 hits (count includes BOR and BOM). If one were to keep the current article title, an additional Wikipedia article on "Behavioral Operations Management" would be needed. In this case, 80% of what is currently written under "Behavioral Operations Research" would also go under "Behavioral Operations Management" (as by my arguments above) - what would be a substantial duplication. Perhaps more importantly, the term "Behavioral Operations" is way more popular than "Behavioral Operations Research" in the literature. — Preceding unsigned comment added by TPape (talk • contribs) 21:28, 7 March 2020 (UTC)
 * The number of search hits for any three-word phrase is always going to be less than when searching for only the first two words, regardless of whether those two words are the common name of a topic or not. If "Behavioral operations management" is basically synonymous and more commonly used than "Behavioral operations research", as you seem to say, then please consider renaming the article to "". However, please note that we have separate articles on and, and we seem OK with that. Those are much more well accepted terms than "Operations" by itself, which this proposal seems to imply would be a good name. Having said all that, I will admit that I'm not especially familiar with the topic, and I am happy to defer if others who are more qualified think I'm off-base here. —BarrelProof (talk) 00:08, 8 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Compromise: Behavioral operations management. The article title discussion is admittedly quite a niche academic question. I may feel particular passionate about it as I am just about to finish my PhD in Behvioral Operations. From my perspective, I am happy to go with BarrelProof's suggestion as compromise and rename the article to "Behavioral operations management". That is because from a practical perspective, (almost) all behavioural operations research work is also behavioural operations management; though not the other way around! And as the citation counts indicate, the term "behavioral operations management" is way more popular than "behavioral operations research". To be clear, "Behavioral operations" feels to me still as the best title but "Behavioral operations management" is also okay.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by TPape (talk • contribs) 16:28, 13 March 2020 (UTC)


 * The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.