OR and Strategy

Strategic development is fundamentally concerned with organisational development over the longer term, moving an organisation in the direction of a desirable goal or objective.

Thus deciding where you want to go, examining what may lie ahead, choosing between options, setting targets, planning how to move in the direction you want to and checking progress along the way are all important components of any process designed to support strategic development.

Strategic decisions, such as launching a new product or choosing between sites for a new building programme are characterised by their difficulty to reverse since they often have enduring consequences.

Helping managers to understand the nature of the issues they face and to have confidence that decisions made have been supported by appropriate analysis of knowledge, information and data, are some of the contributions that OR can make to strategic development.

The aims of the group are to provide a forum which promotes a discussion of the contribution that OR makes to strategic issues in organisations and increases awareness of the potential for OR methods to support strategic development and strategic level analysis.

Future Events

ORS Annual Conference OR68: From Data to Decisions

8–10 September 2026
University of Nottingham, United Kingdom

For those working at the intersection of operational research and strategy, OR68 offers a space to explore how analysis shapes long-term choices, trade-offs, and organisational direction. The conference brings together strategic thinkers and practitioners to share how evidence, modelling, and judgement are used to support robust, defensible decisions in complex and uncertain environments.

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Committee Details

OR & Strategy - Reflexive exploration of Scenario Planning pedagogy

Our recent online event featured Eleanor Reynolds from Warwick Business School, exploring Scenario Planning pedagogy.

This early-stage research stemmed from discussions at the 2023 Scenario Planning and Foresight conference, co-hosted by the OR Society and the British Academy of Management. Drawing on university module materials and an OR Society training course, the session highlighted the role of authentic pedagogy and examined how differing teaching approaches shape students' perceptions of Scenario Planning—its relevance, complexity, and integration with other tools.