Developing the conceptual relevance of operations management

In the complex and dynamic world of business activities, the champions of operations management claim relevance and argue for greater recognition and impact of the role of the operations manager. The ANZAM 2003 operations management symposium had as one of its main aims: 'to explore the reasons for the apparent decline in the study of operations management in both undergraduate and post graduate courses in Australia and New Zealand'. (ANZAM, 2003) While this is commendable, one must question why it should be so and whether there may be reasons why the discipline does not succeed by itself, why it does not sell itself in terms of the content of the courses and the results achieved by the graduates of the courses. In other words rather than see this as merely a promotional issue, perhaps there are some issues which need to be addressed within the operations management discipline itself. Are there ways of developing greater relevance, are there opportunities being missed? This paper presents an argument for developing greater conceptual relevance within the teaching of operations management courses and especially within the literature as represented by operations management texts.