Reconciling Rigor Versus Relevance: Lessons from Humanitarian Fleet Management
重新审视运筹学中严谨性与相关性的争论，以人道主义车队管理为例，指出定量模型虽多但未被实际采用，提出结合硬运筹与软运筹的方法来增强实践相关性。
This position paper reframes the ongoing relevance versus rigor debate in operations research (OR) as a Kuhnian epistemological crisis, in which the dominant paradigm of quantitative modeling shows signs of exhaustion. Humanitarian fleet management is presented as an empirical case of extensive operations theory, which has not been implemented by the stakeholders who paid for its production. We propose a possible way out of the crisis by combining “hard” and “soft” OR, illustrating the potential with a selected problem structuring method. Optimization solutions can become more productive by first surfacing the organizational context of decision-making. The illustration emphasizes that hard and soft OR are not binary opposites but interlocking, mutually empowering components which expand the evidence base. Shifting the current paradigm toward more engaged scholarship could counteract the ongoing theoretical drift, for more strategic impact on the pressing problems of today.