TEACHING UNDERGRADUATE OPERATIONS-RESEARCH IN SOME OF THE BUSINESS SCHOOLS IN ASIA

Operations research and management science (OR/MS) have long been acce pted as an inherent part of management studies in the US; however, the pedagogy of OR/MS in most of the Asian countries has not yet evoked t he attention of Western scholars. We carried out a questionnaire surve y to explore the teaching of undergraduate OR/MS in business schools i n Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. The responses revealed some sim ilarities among these four countries. In particular, less than half of the respondents indicated that OR/MS was a required course in their u ndergraduate curricula. They saw the two most important objectives of this course as improving students' ability to think logically and enha ncing their overall quantitative skills. Among OR/MS subjects, linear programming is the major topic covered. Simulation receives insufficie nt attention. In addition, instructors in Asia commonly rely on exampl e calculations and the explanation of theory.