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Doctoral education (DE) is central to the development and application of operations management (OM) thinking. The European Doctoral Educational Network (EDEN) seminar on research methodology in OM is a structured initiative developed in 1999 by European Operations Management Association (EurOMA) and European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management (EIASM). This intensive five-day seminar has run annually since and, to date, has engaged 486 students. The purpose of this paper is to ask: what role has the OM EDEN seminar played in the formation and academic career development of doctoral researchers, and how has it contributed to the development of EurOMA as a community of practice?

The authors developed a retrospective case on the design, launch and growth of the OM EDEN seminar employing two data gathering methods (collecting secondary and archival data, and a survey of four selected seminar participants) and a social network analysis.

The EDEN seminar is an effective educational intervention in developing doctoral researchers and their subsequent academic careers. The seminar has also contributed to EurOMA as a community of practice, bringing faculty together to teach, write and publish leading edge contributions in research methods for OM.

The case is focused on the OM EDEN seminar only, within which the survey is limited to four of the early participants. While another set of participants might respond differently in detail, the authors’ expectation is that participant perception of the role of the seminar would not change. The paper provides an exemplar for European academic associations to guide how they might explore the formation and academic career development of doctoral candidates within a community of practice.

The seminar merits the ongoing support of EurOMA and EIASM, not just in educating doctoral students but also in bringing faculty together to publish leading edge contributions to the OM domain.

The paper draws on the areas of student formation, academic career development and communities of practice to illustrate the role played by the OM EDEN seminar.

This paper is the first description, analysis and reflection on the role played by the OM EDEN seminar.

The aim of this review and of the papers in this special issue is to critically examine different approaches to teaching operations management (OM) in order to provoke and stimulate educators within the discipline.

The papers within this special issue include empirical assessments of a problem‐based learning enterprise resource planning (ERP) simulation; a computer‐based learning tool for material requirements planning (MRP); a simulation of assembly operations; an operations strategy innovation game; an extension of the production dice game; an experiential teaching method in different class settings; and problem‐based assessment methods in OM. A variety of data are used to support these empirical studies, including survey, interview, and observational data.

The papers within the special issue support the argument that OM is well‐suited to more applied methods of teaching focusing on the application of subject knowledge to real‐life situations through a variety of techniques.

It is hoped that this review and the papers within this special issue act to stimulate educators to re‐evaluate their approaches to teaching OM and encourage them to consider adopting experiential teaching methods, business simulations, role‐plays, group exercises, live cases, and virtual learning environments, instead of, or in addition to, the more conventional lectures that typically dominate many OM modules around the world.

A special issue on teaching OM appears timely given the significant changes to both the university landscape and to the nature of the discipline that we have witnessed over the last quarter of a century.