Maurice Kirby

Operational Research in War and Peace: The British Experience from the 1930s to 1970

This is the first of two projected volumes on the history of operational research (OR) in Britain commissioned by the UK Operational Research Society. Based upon a vast array of published and unpublished sources, the book provides an original account of the disciplines pre-war and wartime origins. This serves as a prelude to a wide-ranging analysis of the diffusion of OR into the public and private sectors after 1945. The chapters on the role of OR in iron and steel and coalmining, and its rapid adoption in the UK corporate sector after 1960, will be of particular interest to practitioners. The book also analyses and explains the diffusion of OR into local and central government and provides an informed commentary on the origins and subsequent history of the OR Society. Professor Kirby has related the development of OR in the UK to contemporary developments in the USA. The book concludes with a resume of the post-1970 debates concerning the future trajectory of OR.

Operations Research Trajectories: The Anglo-American Experience from the 1940s to the 1990s

This paper is derived from the authors sponsored history of Operations Research in Britain from its formal inception in the later 1930s. It is inspired by the knowledge that any history of OR in Britain that ignores the interrelationship with OR in the United States would be grossly incomplete. This relates not only to the period of military collaboration in World War II but also to the profound influence on British operations researchers of American-derived techniques and methods. The Anglo-American perspective serves also to highlight major contrasts, as well as striking similarities in the development of OR in both countries. The paper advocates the need for ongoing research into the history of OR as an essential complement to the advancing frontier of knowledge, both in theory and in practice. Virtually all disciplines worthy of university-level study have their chroniclers, and this should apply with no less force to OR in the light of its impressive trajectory of development and early acknowledgment of its utilitarian value in a wide variety of settings in the public and private sectors.

Paradigm Change in Operations Research: Thirty Years of Debate

From the 1970s onwards, the OR community in Britain engaged in ongoing debate on the future of the discipline, the product of an emerging “crisis of confidence” engendered in part by the end of the “golden age of western economic growth” and the associated downsizing, or abolition, of practitioner groups in the corporate industrial sector. In addition, reservations were expressed concerning the increasing “mathematization” of academic OR in the context of the established “hard” or “classical” paradigm. In this respect, British operations researchers, aided and abetted by a number of American colleagues (notably Ackoff, Churchman, and Miser), engaged in a fundamental reappraisal of the OR methodological repertoire and its client base. Thus, in Britain, a new phase in the history of OR was inaugurated whereby the “positivist/scientist” approach bequeathed by the wartime pioneers was subject to challenge and qualification. Whilst some elements in the American OR community empathized with the emergent British critique, the response (notwithstanding Ackoff et al.) was, on the whole, relatively muted. This conservative American response provides one part of the rationale for this paper. The key issue here is to compare and contrast the tone and content of the Anglo-American debate on the future of OR after 1970: In simple terms, why did British OR practitioners and academics (especially the latter) respond so vigorously to the post-1970 OR critique in marked contrast to their American counterparts? In explaining the differential response, the paper will emphasize the interplay among an array of political, intellectual, and economic factors.

The Society of Friends and the Family Firm, 1700–1830

It has long been recognised by historians that Quakers are overrepresented in the ranks of successful businessmen during the formative phases of Britains industrialisation in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This article uses primary records to confirm the validity of Raistricks pioneering work on Quaker networks as an important source of capital funding. It extends Raistricks work by focusing attention on the Meeting House system as an institution conducive both to the internal surveillance of business conduct and the maintenance of commercial confidence. The article concludes with a case study of Quaker entrepreneurship in the early railway sector.

The intellectual journey of Russell Ackoff: from OR apostle to OR apostate

Russell Ackoff has had a distinguished career in operational research both as an academic and practitioner. His influence on the development of the discipline in the US and Britain in the 1950s and 1960s was considerable. Yet during the 1970s Ackoff registered increasing disillusion with the course and conduct of OR on both sides of the Atlantic. His rejection of the established mathematical paradigm and appeal for a wider social and political remit for the discipline was writ large at the UK Operational Research Societys conference in 1978. This paper, stimulated by the authors research into the history of British OR, analyses the evolution of Ackoffs thought in order to explain the sources of his disillusion and the short and longer term reactions to his recantation.

The origins of railway enterprise : the Stockton and Darlington Railway, 1821-1863

List of illustrations List of maps and plans List of tables Acknowledgements 1. The Stockton and Darlington Railway in economic and business history 2. The prelude to railways 3. The foundation of the Stockton and Darlington Railway Company, 1818-1825 4. Hopes fulfilled, 1825-1833 5. Growth and competition, 1834-1847 6. Crisis, 1847-1850 7. The mature company, 1850-1863 Epilogue Appendices Notes Bibliography Index.

'A festering sore' : the issue of professionalism in the history of the Operational Research Society

An essential component of the history of Operational Research (OR) in Britain is the institutional development of the discipline. In this respect, a defining element is the debate on the issue of professionalism, which took place within the Operational Research Society (ORS) in the later 1960s and 1970s. For the historian, the debate provides major insights into the composition of the OR community at a critical stage in its development following on the sustained expansion of ORS membership in the 1960s. As this article reveals, the proposed movement of the ORS from ‘learned society’ to ‘professional’ status proved to be a deeply divisive issue, with a hard core of ORS members, both academics and practitioners, combining to resist the recommendations of the contemporary ORS Council and the leading officers of the Society. The article focuses on the debates on what one protagonist viewed as ‘a festering sore’ in the history of the ORS. In this respect, it provides a prologue to a second article commenting on the origins and results of the recent decision of the ORS Council to establish a professional membership grade—‘Fellow of the Operational Research Society’.

Spreading the gospel of management science: operational research in Iron and Steel, 1950–1970

This paper builds on the authors earlier work on the history of operational research by presenting an analysis of the development of the discipline in Iron and Steel, an industry long regarded as one of the outstanding pioneers in the application of management science to decision-making processes. The contribution of Sir Charles Goodeve and BISRA to the diffusion and practice of operational research is well-documented. Less well known is the reaction to operational research within the managerial hierarchies of the private sector iron and steel companies. In the light of the development of dedicated operational research groups by the leading companies after 1950, it might be assumed that the industry was highly receptive to the discipline in terms of its perceived benefits. The present paper questions this assumption by highlighting the problems encountered by operational researchers in two of the largest Iron and Steel Companies which gave every appearance of being at the forefront of the practice of management science in British industry. Where appropriate, the paper draws contrasts and comparisons with the development of operational research within the nationalised Coal Industry.

The ‘invisible science’: operational research for the British Armed Forces after 1945

This paper presents an original account of the contribution of operational research (OR) to the formulation of tactics and strategy on behalf of the British Armed Forces in the four decades after 1945. The main focus is on the Cold War in the European theatre, where OR analysts devoted considerable time and effort to the modelling of warfare on behalf of the British Army of the Rhine. In the absence of combat data for nuclear weapons, OR analysts devised a sequence of war games which evolved in conformity with the development of NATO strategy in relation to the Warsaw Pact. Again in the context of the Cold War, the paper analyses the role of OR in relation to the early V bomber force and the introduction of ‘global war studies’ on behalf of the Royal Navy. The paper also comments on the organisational structure of British military OR following on the creation of a centralised OR facility within the Ministry of Defence in 1965. In conclusion, the paper notes the sea-change in military OR following the end of the Cold War in 1990 and the onset of a period of sustained ‘asymmetric’ military operations in the former Yugoslavia, the Middle East and Afghanistan.

Charles Frederick Goodeve

After World WarII, many of the scientists who had applied their knowledge to study and solve military planning and operational problems returned to their laboratories and universities. There were a few, however, who recognized that their military successes, which had launched the fledgling science of Operations Research (OR), could be transferred into the industrial and business worlds. Sir Charles Frederick Goodeve, a physical chemist, was the most prominent and influential advocate of OR as a means of raising industrial productivity in postwar Britain. Appointed in 1945 as director of the newly formed British Iron and Steel Research Association (BISRA), Charles ensured that OR was represented as a distinct department with the mission of applying the scientific method to industrial problems.