From Optimizing to Learning: A Development of Systems Thinking for the 1990s

In any subject concerned with rational intervention in human affairs, theory must lead to practice; but practice is the source of theory: neither theory nor practice is prime. We can examine this ‘groundless’ relation by asking what intellectual framework F is applied in what methodology M to what area of application A? If we do this for O.R., systems analysis, systems engineering etc., we see that F and M have changed dramatically between the 1950s and the 1980s, yielding the ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ traditions of systems thinking. The ‘hard’ tradition, based on goal seeking, is examined in the work of Simon and contrasted with the ‘soft’ tradition, based on learning, as exemplified in the work of Vickers and the development of soft systems methodology. The two are complementary, but the relation between them is that the ‘hard’ is a special case of ‘soft’ systems thinking. This analysis makes sense of the recent history of management science and helps to prepare us for the 1990s.     

Beyond a System of Systems Methodologies

This paper describes a research programme which used the idea that there is a ‘system of systems methodologies’ to analyse the relationship between OR and other systems-based, problem-solving approaches, and to relate different systems methodologies to appropriate problem-contexts. The results are promising for those who wish to broaden the theoretical basis of OR in order to extend its domain of effective application. Further progress, however, depends upon reconstituting the research programme on surer theoretical foundations. Unless this is done, both the potential of the original work and its initial intent risk being lost. It is now necessary to go beyond ‘a system of systems methodologies’ and to embed that work in an explicit proposal for a critical management science.     

Developing a Methodology for Multidisciplinary Action Research: A Case Study

This paper describes an approach taken to carrying out multidisciplinary action research into contract management within the National Health Service. The work forms part of the ‘Contracts and Competition Programme’ funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. The members of the team had little experience of multidisciplinary research prior to the start of the study and little guidance in this regard is provided in the management science literature. Hence, there was a clearly identified need to develop an approach capable of guiding the work and ensuring that the wide range of disciplinary perspectives within the team could be successfully incorporated into an integrated whole. The approach taken makes use of concepts from soft systems methodology to provide an overarching framework for this purpose and this paper reports on its successes and failures.     

Beyond methodology choice: critical systems thinking as critically systemic discourse

Professional competence in applied disciplines such as OR/MS requires both technical expertise and critically reflective skills. Yet, a widespread misconception has taken hold of the OR/MS community: ‘critical’ and ‘emancipatory’ systems methodologies are opposed to ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ ones as if they were sensible alternatives. Accordingly, adequate ‘methodology choice’ is now widely considered a key condition of reflective professional practice; critical systems thinking (CST) is understood to deal mainly with this issue. The present paper argues that this conception of CST is neither theoretically sound nor conducive to reflective practice. An examination of the two major current strands of CST suggests some basic requirements of an alternative conception: (1) Reflective practice depends more on a framework of critical argumentation and discourse than on a framework of methodology choice. (2) A well-conceived discursive systems approach will give a proper place to the public sphere. (3) The much-discussed emancipatory orientation of CST inheres in the methodological requirements of discourse rather than in an arbitrary ‘commitment’ on the part of the systems practitioner. (4) Systemic boundary critique—the methodological core concept of critical systems heuristics (CSH)—allows us to translate these requirements into practical methodology. (5) Contrary to present conceptions of methodological pluralism or ‘complementarism’, boundary critique must not be subordinated to methodology choice, for it is constitutive of all critical inquiry and practice. These considerations lead to a reconstitution of CST, and to a new view of reflective professional practice in general, as critically systemic discourse.     

On the Nature of OR — Entering the Fray

In 1980 a seminar of operational researchers and practitioners from a variety of different countries concluded that there was a remarkable consensus about the way that the process of operational research and systems analysis should be understood and practised. Since then the development of new methods has continued apace, stimulated by interaction with the social sciences and paradigms other than natural science. This paper enters the debate, started in this journal, about the nature of OR's status as science or technology. It recognizes the historic claims of science on OR, but it suggests that for ‘private’ consumption, technology will prove more fruitful, and for ‘public’ consumption practitioners will increasingly adopt the label ‘consultant’. Ackoff's original six-step method of OR is updated to reflect current OR practice. The process suggested acknowledges the importance of context, socio-political factors and the growing role of facilitation.     

Developing a Visual Interactive Model for Corporate Cash Management

The operational research/management science journals contain an extensive literature that addresses the corporate cash management problem; yet few, if any, companies make use of any of this published work in their daily cash-management decision making. A review of the literature suggests that the reason for this lack of applications may well be poor problem formulation—the problems that are solved in the literature as ‘cash management’ problems evolve from a ‘hard systems’ view of real-world cash management. However, the problem as perceived by cash managers involves both dynamic and loosely structured components which are difficult to model using classical (i.e. ‘hard systems’) approaches.We therefore decided to approach the cash management problem as an experiment in the use of a novel visual interactive problem solving (VIPS) methodology. The aim of the experiment was to develop an implementable, visual interactive model to support daily cash management decision making. Working closely with a corporate cash manager, we first developed a visual model of his daily decision problem and then agreed on the feasible options and the interactive requirements. At this stage, the problem was sufficiently well defined for a mathematical model to be built and the visual model made ‘smart’.This paper discusses the results of this experiment and suggests that VIPS may have distinct advantages as a problem-solving technique in loosely structured, ‘messy’ problem situations.     

The Decentralization of Management Science and the Birth of Self-Starters

In this paper, the authors provide a commentary on current trends in management science. This commentary is based largely on US experience gleaned from published material. This material indicates that the environment of management science is rapidly changing. Personal computers, end-user computing, the information centre, other information system elements and the general competitive state of many US organizations provide significant changes. Opportunities for interdisciplinary activity, through decision support systems, expert systems, strategic planning and material requirements planning, exist even more than in the past. This opportunity for growth may occur through ‘self-starters’. Self-starters are line managers who develop their own management science projects without direction from above or the direct assistance of management science staff. The current environment, the decentralization of management science and the birth of self-starters are discussed, as well as implications of this trend.     

Frameworks of Inquiry: OR Practice Across the Hard—Soft Divide

The growing interest in understanding the practice of OR has, not unnaturally, tended to concentrate upon experience with those ‘soft’ methodologies which address both process and content management issues. This paper uses a detailed account of one practitioner's work in a ‘traditional’ area of OR (linear programming) to demonstrate how process-related issues are handled there, and argues that more extensive reporting of such conventional practice is essential for the health of the discipline. In particular, it suggests that an emphasis on discussing the development of working relationships between OR practitioners and their clients might usefully supplant the contemporary emphasis on the ‘project’.     

O.R. and the Systems Movement: Mappings and Conflicts

The ‘crisis’ debate in O.R. expresses concern at the divergence between textbook O.R. and what practitioners actually do. The debate is examined by comparing O.R., systems analysis and systems engineering. They are all wedded to logic in situations in which logic may not be paramount. The science in O.R. applies only to aggregate results, but the practitioner must deal with a specific situation. The tradition of systems thinking which emerged from organismic biology is described. It leads to a way out of the O.R. ‘crisis’, by providing a formal structuring of a paradigm of learning rather than optimization. O.R. can aspire to match natural science, and pass the problems by; or it can close the textbook/practitioner gap by changing its concept of ‘being scientific’.     

The development of management sciences/operational research discourses: surveying the trends in the US and the UK

This paper explores the trends in American and British management science/operational research (MS/OR) during the last 25 years. We argue that British MS/OR has developed a soft and systemic approach to MS/OR practice, which has resulted in the emergence of a number of interpretive and critical-oriented methodologies. American MS/OR practice has remained closed to the positivistic discourse. Using a set of keywords and authors’ names associated with the main features of the interpretive and critical MS discourses, we surveyed articles published in three major US MS/OR journals. We compare these results with trends in the UK MS/OR scene. Findings appear to confirm the different directions taken by the MS/OR practice across the Atlantic. The paper posits possible reasons underpinning these differences: firstly, the particular methodological path followed by the British MS/OR, from early ‘soft systems’ applications in the early 1970s to the now well-established ‘Problem Structuring Methods’; and secondly, continuous engagement between the systems and MS/OR British communities (a dialogue that seems not to have occurred in the US). The paper contributes to a reflection on the MS/OR historical developments and contrasts these developments in both countries, two areas of OR significantly under-researched.     

Management science methodologies in environmental management and sustainability: discourses and applications

This paper investigates and discusses the use of systemic methodologies (SMs) developed in management science/operational research (MS/OR), in particular, those SM that have been informing the complexity inherent in environmental management and sustainable (EM/S) practices. By surveying a sample of the top MS/OR and systems journals, we assess the extent to which systemic management science methodologies developed recently have been used in tackling EM/S problems. Titles and abstracts of EM/S applications published in MS/OR and systems journals between 1989 and 2009 were queried for the occurrence of typical keywords associated with a set of SMs (eg, complexity theory, systems dynamics, soft systems, critical systems, viable systems model). The survey identifies a set of articles representing the practice of either a particular methodology or of a mixture of various SMs in EM/S setting. By assembling and critically reviewing a sample of applications in EM/S the paper hopes to raise awareness among environmentalists, operational researchers and management scientists of the benefits of using systemic approaches developed in MS/OR and, in this way, to encourage further exchange and conversation between these fields of management.     

Yield management in UK hotels: a systems analysis

A yield management (YM) system is one of the most recent examples of systems development in the hotel industry. YM systems interact with global distribution systems, property management systems and front office systems. However, despite the prevalence of the term ‘systems’, little operational research or systems analysis has been conducted in the hotel sector. In hospitality research journals, yield management is the most researched aspect of hotel operations, but such research is largely conceptual, with limited examples of empirical or systems analysis. This study was designed to undertake, for the first time, a soft systems analysis of yield management in hotels and to develop a systems model. Research was conducted in a number of hotels implementing yield management. One of the case studies is presented to illustrate this. Using this conceptual model, YM theory is critiqued, YM practice is discussed, and subsequently a number of YM issues are identified.     

Management scientists and managers: Experiences of an OR-practitioner with a critical interface

What management scientists can do still outstrips the use made of such skills by management. However, breakthroughs are being made in building the benefits of management science into the structure, systems, and management processes of firms. This is where management science must be if it is to be effective; solutions on an ad hoc basis are usually not acceptable by top management.Here described is a framework for determining the management style of any particular firm. The implication is that then a strategy can be developed for systematically positioning management science endeavors in such a way that the benefits are actually accepted by top management as dealing with the problems and issues management itself perceives. Unless a solution addresses the problem that concerns top management, the solution will never be considered seriously, even if it is ‘correct’.The taxonomy of management styles was developed by the author emperically in the course of his management consulting with many films in a variety of industries worldwide. If focuses on the nature of the decision-making process, and is presented here for the first time in print.     

Intervening in the Cultural Constitution of Systems—Methodological Complementarism and other Visions for Systems Research

This paper uses a culture perspective to examine the complementarist idea of combining hard, soft and critical methodologies in systems research. The culture perspective is adopted because it reminds us that all research is underpinned by socially constructed meanings that often severely constrain the range of options that are possible. It is particularly appropriate, therefore, in the context of a situation where systems researchers are being urged to develop their research capabilities in distinctive ways. The future prospects for complementarism are examined in relation to two major factors—its cultural ‘content’, and the overall level of receptiveness to culture change in the systems community.     

Multimethodology in series and parallel: strategic planning using hard and soft OR

This paper examines two distinct ways in which hard and soft operational research (OR) methodologies can be combined, in series and in parallel. Multimethodology in series is acknowledged as the simpler and more common approach. Multimethodology in parallel is identified as having the potential to provide significant benefits to projects in political, changing, or ‘wicked’ contexts that multimethodology in series cannot. Observations regarding these approaches to multimethodology are examined in light of an information systems strategic planning project in the Australian public sector. Two distinct methodologies were combined in the project: soft systems methodology and project management. These methodologies are based on the soft and hard paradigms, respectively. However, findings in this paper have the potential to be transferred to combinations of other hard and soft OR methodologies.     

Operational Research for the Real World: big questions from a small island

The address explores three questions that are important for operational research: ‘Where do we come from?’, ‘What are we?’ and ‘Where are we going?’ First, it looks briefly at the history of O.R. from Babbage to Blackett and the importance of a ‘union of theory and practice’ in our work. Then it looks at O.R.'s identity and image and argues that we do have a reasonably clear idea of our identity, although we do not give sufficient prominence to our contribution to improving system design. It also argues that the ‘brand image’ of O.R. has become diluted and needs to be simple, distinctive, relevant and compelling. In considering how we might achieve that, by addressing the third question, it proposes that we should grow our capability and activity in accommodating ‘analytics’, in building in behavioural science, in coping with complex systems, in developing design thinking and in encouraging evaluation. It also suggests strengthening bridges between academics and practitioners, between those working in different specialisms and in diverse sectors and between O.R. and the public. Finally, it argues that such developments would assist O.R. to reinforce our bridge between science and the humanities and enable us to better meet the challenges of the ‘real world’.     

Supporting strategic conversations: the significance of a quantitative model building process

This paper reports on the use of a quantitative system dynamics simulation model building process that followed on from a ‘soft OR’ strategy making intervention with a top management team. The work was carried out for the Chief Constable and top team of a UK police force. The output of the ‘soft OR’ strategy making process provided the reason for, and so focus of, the simulation model. The focus of the strategic conversation was on exploring the tension between the supply of resources (in this case police officers) and the demands placed on those officers. The project involved a series of strategic conversations with members of the top team that were stimulated through the process of building a system dynamics model. The process was facilitated by two modellers—one focussing on managing the strategic enquiry, while the other considered the implications of the conversation for the construction of the system dynamics model. Through the process of gradually building the system dynamics model, a number of issues and lessons were raised for the development and delivery of effective strategy making and the strategic management of public organisations. In addition there were implications for operational research model building processes, especially when operating at senior levels and within a strategic context.