Models for compassionate operations

Social issues such as sustainability, poverty alleviation, health care management, philanthropic activities, humanitarian aid, and education can all benefit from modeling efforts from operations management and production economics researchers. This focus, for which we term compassionate operations, has seen increased attention in recent years. With the culmination of major natural and man-made crises, increased environmental concerns, and increased globalization and knowledge, comes a wider awareness of social problems that need to be addressed. We, as a community of scholars can further investigation into this topic. Thus, in this paper we identify some characteristics and dimensions of compassionate operations, what research has been completed in the International Journal of Production Economics on compassionate operations, directions for potential research and an overview of papers in this special issue. Significant findings and directions for additional research are introduced.