This volume contains the proceedings of the 1997 International Symposium on Operations Research (SOR' 97) held at the Friedrich-Schiller-Universitat Jena, Sep- tember 3-5, 1997. The symposium was organized under the auspices of the two German societies on Operations Research, namely the Deutsche Gesellschajt fur Operations Research (DGOR) and the Gesellschajt fur Mathematik, Okonomie und Operations Research (GMOOR). During their annual business meetings, the DGOR and GMOOR members unanimously decided that their societies should be assimi- lated by the newly founded Gesellschajt fur Operations Research (GOR). The SOR' 97 meeting was attended by 521 participants from 31 countries. The presentation of 360 papers was organized in 16 sections, each of which also saw semiplenary lectures by prominent invited speakers. Plenary lectures by J.K. Lenstra and P. Mertens as well as a panel discussion on the role of new communication media represented major academic events of the symposium. 131 papers were submitted for publication in the present volume. The space limitation and the advice of the section chairpersons only allowed for the inclusion of 85 contributed papers in the proceedings. Additionally, written versions of seven semiplenary lectures could be included in the volume. The abstracts of all 360 papers presented at the symposium can be obtained in electronic form from the WWW at http: //www.wiwLuni-jena.de/sor97.html.