Richard J. Ormerod

The History and Ideas of Pragmatism

This paper examines the origins of philosophical pragmatism in the USA in the second half of the 19th-century and its development and use up to the Second World War. The story is told through the lives and ideas of some of the main originators, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr, Charles Saunders Peirce, William James and John Dewey. The core idea of pragmatism, that beliefs are guides to actions and should be judged against the outcomes rather than abstract principles, dominated American thinking during the period of economic and political growth from which the USA emerged as a world power. The paper suggests that the practical, commonsense, scientific approach embedded in pragmatism resonates with OR as practised and that much of pragmatism could be attractive to practitioners and academics alike.

Combining management consultancy and research

Consultancy provides the academic with experience which can provide a rich source of research material. In practice attempts to combine consultancy and research can be frustrating. In general consultants and academics differ in their motivations, outlook and behaviour. For a consulting assignment to act as a research vehicle, many different approaches can be adopted and a wide variety of subject matter can be the focus of attention. In the paper these issues are explored in relation to the authors experience in conducting an information systems project at an Australian iron ore mine. Consultants lack an explicit philosophy to provide coherence to their practice: pragmatism may be sufficient but the possibilities of a post-modernist stance are intriguing. For academics who wish to engage in consultancy the challenge is to understand and perform the role of the consultant beyond the constraints of their academic beliefs and behaviours.

Putting soft OR methods to work: Information systems strategy development at Palabora

The development of a new information systems (IS) strategy for a major UK food and grocery retailer is described. The approach taken was highly participative and made use of a number of models and methods developed by the advocates of soft OR and systems thinking. The resulting process was successful in delivering a strategy developed by management, with commitment to implement it. In addition, the teamwork across functional boundaries was recognized as valuable management development.

The design of organisational intervention: Choosing the approach

At some point in an intervention, the operational research consultant has to choose how to approach the issue in hand. The need for an explicit approach depends on who will be involved and the nature of the relationship between consultant and client. Increasingly, as the organisational distance between the two parties increases, the approach taken has to be declared formally and at an early stage. The approach chosen may be a general approach for consultancy assignments, it may be a specific, named approach taken from the literature, or it may be designed specifically for that particular intervention. The choice of methods will depend on the organisational context, the degree of participation envisaged, the consultants skills and on the nature of the outcome required. The paper draws on theory to articulate these choices. A personal experiment is described in which critical systems heuristics, soft systems methodology, and the strategic choice approach are used to structure the process of designing an intervention. As a result two concepts are introduced, (i) personal intervention competence and (ii) intervention transformation requirement and context. These concepts are used to suggest a general method mixing approach referred to as the transformation competence model.

Putting soft OR methods to work : The case of the business improvement project at PowerGen

In 1994 PowerGen, a UK electricity generating company, conducted a business improvement project. The project used a participative approach involving soft OR and systems thinking, an approach that was developed in earlier projects in food retailing and mining. The aim of the project was initially to conduct a benchmarking exercise and develop an information systems (IS) strategy. As the project progressed the emphasis moved to business process redesign and downsizing in the light of new perceptions of business prospects. The paper describes the design and implementation of the intervention, the evolution of the project, the problems encountered, and the outcome. Throughout it describes in some detail the interaction that took place. Although many improvements to current operations were identified for implementation, it proved difficult to obtain agreement to a fundamental change in the organisational structure. Two years after the project finished a new organisation based on the projects analysis has been adopted. The case is discussed drawing on a number of recent theoretical themes that have emerged from the debate about the process of OR. Conclusions are drawn about the value of the methods used in the intervention, the practicalities of mixing several methods, and the future direction the research programme should take.

OR/MS Publications: Extension of the Analysis of U.S. Flagship Journals to the United Kingdom

Reisman and Kirschnick Reisman, A., F. Kirschnick. 1994. The devolution of OR/MS: Implications from a statistical content analysis of papers in flagship journals. Opns. Res.42 577-588. have analysed United States Flagship OR/MS Journals over a thirty-year period using statistical content analysis. We have applied their method of analysis, which seeks to distinguish between the space devoted to theory on the one hand and that devoted to applications on the other, to journals based in the United Kingdom. Using their definitions we have classified articles published in the Journal of the Operational Research Society previously OR Quarterly, OMEGA, and OR Insight over the period from 1962 to 1994 to parallel their study. As well as shedding some light on the direction that OR/MS is taking in the United Kingdom, comparison is made with trends in the United States. Further, the European Journal of Operational Research has also been included in the analysis, adding a European dimension. The country of affiliation of the authors has been analysed, providing data on the publishing habits of U.S. authors in the United Kingdom and European-based journals. This casts new light on the findings of Reisman and Kirschnick Reisman, A., F. Kirschnick. 1994. The devolution of OR/MS: Implications from a statistical content analysis of papers in flagship journals. Opns. Res.42 577-588.. Finally, the paper contributes to the debate about the current state and future direction of OR/MS.

Operational research and ethics: A literature review

Any human activity raises ethical questions, questions about ‘good’ and ‘right’ ways to act and to live; or to put it differently, questions of values and responsibility. From its inception operational research (OR) has engaged with such questions in terms of professional behavior, the handling of preferences in OR, the societal role of OR, the process of OR intervention and the content of OR analysis. As a result, analytical methods and processes have been developed to help clients explore the ethical dimension of their decisions. The paper reviews the literature published in selected OR journals (Management Science; Operations Research; Interfaces; the European Journal of Operational Research; the Journal of the Operations Research Society; Omega; International Transactions in Operational Research; the Journal of Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis), organizing it along the lines of OR’s core competences. The review identifies a number of significant research programmes that are well established and are being energetically pursued; the research findings are being applied to a wide range of important issues. Ethical questions lie at the heart of the great governmental and commercial issues of the day: economic growth and instability; inequality and injustice; environmental degradation and sustainability. They also lie at the heart of the more mundane decisions of day-to-day OR. ‘Ethics’ therefore provides a useful focus for OR both in terms of raising the awareness of all concerned and in providing a theme for research. As a result of the review some research questions are suggested. There is much of interest, much to do.

The mangle of OR practice: towards more informative case studies of /`technical' projects

Case studies of interventions involving ‘technical’ OR have traditionally been published in the style of scientific papers. Most are well written and technically sound but few explain the process of intervention, the story of what actually happened. Those interested in the process of OR would like know about the organizational hurdles that had to be surmounted, the changes in direction that were made, the influences of the people involved and technology available on the path taken. The physicist turned sociologist Andrew Pickering has suggested that by conceiving scientific practice as a dynamic process of intertwined elements a more insightful account is obtained, leading to a better understanding and giving rise to more interesting questions. In order to explore this claim the paper describes an OR project that already features in the OR literature, and then discusses it in terms of Pickering’s concept of the mangle of practice. The project examined is the development and use of a model of the UK energy market. The mangle perspective places the emphasis on the interaction through time of material, human and conceptual components of a research programme. It is concluded that the concept of mangle can indeed help case writers produce a more realistic description and help them make better sense of what occurred. Such cases could provide a useful source of material for some academic research programmes.

The transformation competence perspective

Reflections on a number of participative projects have led to the conclusion that, when planning and conducting OR interventions, particular attention should be paid to the transformation to be attempted and to the competence of those who will be involved. The transformation required by a consulting project sets the scope of the ambition that is to be met by the craft skills and expertise of people, supported if appropriate by pre-defined methods. Competence refers to the skills, time and the ability to act of those involved in the intervention. In designing an intervention, activities have to be planned in the light of the transformation required, the competences of those involved and the pre-defined methods available. Pre-defined methods are characterized in terms of their transformation potential, the transformation that can be achieved by using the method in a specific context. The paper elaborates the proposed transformation competence perspective drawing on personal practical experience; its aim is to articulate an approach to the design of participative consulting interventions and compare it with alternatives.

The Evolution of a Performance Measurement Project at Rtz

In 1994, RTZ Corporation plc, the worlds largest mining company, tried to reconcile (a) the desire of central management to compare performance across mine sites with (b) the desire of local management to judge performance in their own terms. The company began a project to establish a method of measuring open-pit productive capacity, to spread best practice, and to motivate higher performance. Initially we saw the solution as a simple model of equipment availability using hard OR derived using a participative process based on soft OR. Trials in Australia, Southern Africa, and North America showed that we needed to combine various hard and soft OR methods and to move the emphasis to achieving breakthroughs in performance. The latest trial resulted in an increase in production of over 25 percent in the first year. The results indicate that soft and hard OR methods can be combined to good effect to produce tangible results.