Engineering Commons^™

Scholarly research on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in the decision sciences is largely concentrated in areas of management and organization design. However, DEI is relevant to other domains of inquiry, and can be understood in terms other than economic efficiency and organization effectiveness. I discuss what a research agenda in decision sciences would look like if DEI, and a focus on social costs and benefits and social justice were central to this work. Examples to be discussed include: the new economy, climate resilience and disaster response, and human services.

Diversity, equity and inclusion are well-studied and widely-practiced areas in organization design, human resources and many areas of social sciences. However, the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) disciplines are somewhat newer to the notion of diversity, equity and inclusion as a way to improve professions and contribute to substantive research within component disciplines. This is especially true for operations research and the decision sciences. In this talk, given to an interdisciplinary audience of engineering professors, administrators and students, I provide an introduction to operations research, to diversity, equity and inclusion within STEM and OR specifically, ways that DEI might …

We like to think that CBOR involves the application of analytical methods to "do good" locally, and, most will agree these efforts are "doing good". However, what is meant by "doing good" and how do we know when our models are not "doing good" and may in fact be doing harm? Some philosophers consider happiness as the only good, and utilitarianism is based on maximizing happiness. But maximizing happiness can create winners and losers, and are we really "doing good" as long as the pluses outweigh the minuses? This presentation will explore these topics using examples drawn from CBOR.