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During the Annual Operational Research Society Simulation Workshop in Worchester, UK, in 2010, a panel discussion entitled "discrete‐event simulation (DES) is dead, long live agent‐based simulation (ABS)!" was held. Subsequent debates on the topic have captured the interest of many simulation professionals and researchers. This study lends credence to the discourse with evidence. In January 2020, a global health crisis named coronavirus disease (COVID‐19) occurred, infecting and killing millions of people globally, leading to community lockdowns and travel restrictions, and bringing the world to a standstill. Scientists scrambled for quick, practical solutions to stem the tide. Operational research (OR) and management science (MS) techniques, including modeling and simulation, provide effective methods to make COVID‐19 infection forecasts, assign/optimize intensive care unit beds, initiate healthcare management/control strategies, and decision‐making. The global pandemic problems offer an opportunity to evaluate the discourse on DES's continuous relevance and potency as an OR/MS technique. Utilizing bibliometric performance evaluation and text analytics of publications addressing various COVID‐19 pandemic problems, the results show an extensive use, relevance, and impact of the DES technique across multidisciplinary domains, including medical/healthcare, social and behavioral sciences, business, molecular biosciences, and more. The intellectual structure highlights strong multidisciplinary collaboration among sources in decision sciences, healthcare, natural, behavioral, and social sciences. The social network analysis of the publications shows the contributions and collaborations among authors, institutions, and countries. The study demonstrates that DES is still alive and robust, notwithstanding the hype about ABS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The journal "International Transactions in Operational Research" (ITOR) marks its 30th anniversary this year. This study undertakes the first bibliometrics analysis of ITOR covering the past 30 years (1994–2023). Utilizing metadata from 1835 articles published in the journal, this article evaluates ITOR's intellectual, conceptual, and social structures. The study highlights several exciting outcomes: First, the literature publication trend shows sustained growth and increased articles' publication and citation impacts. Second, the analysis of the intellectual structure using co‐citation analysis and text analytics identified a solid collaborative relationship with core sources in operations research and management science and applications. Third, the conceptual evaluation using the co‐occurrence of keywords as the unit of analysis identifies the thematic trends of publications in ITOR. Finally, the social structures, which focused on country collaborations and literature contributions dynamics and impacts, offer insights into future directions to maintaining or strategizing a global focus for the Journal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present an expanded framework for the use of business analytics in projects. To the commonly used descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive analytics, we add comparative analytics, wherein we compare the performance of systems under different interventions. This framework provides a conceptual roadmap for the implementation of business analytics projects. We then demonstrate this framework using recent operations research literature on analytics in healthcare, summarizing papers focusing on one of these aspects. Next, we discuss queue mining as an example of theory and practice illustrative of these aspects. We conclude there is room for further work by operations researchers and management scientists within business analytics projects generally and the healthcare industry more specifically. We argue future work should consider both theory and practice, especially within prescriptive analytics projects, where analysis through the lens of operations research and management science is imperative. We provide some thoughts on the current and future state of operations research and management science in business analytics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we focus on papers published in a set of four premier journals, Journal of Operations Management, Production and Operations Management, Manufacturing and Service Operations Management, and Management Science over the 15‐year period of 2001–2015. Using simple and weighted counts of papers along with network measures of Total Degree centrality and Bonacich Power centrality, we provide rankings of top authors and institutions in the field of Operations Management (OM) serving as hubs of research, connectivity, and productivity from across the world. In view of benefits that can accrue from increased research collaboration between academicians and practitioners, we examine the levels of practitioner participation in the research works published across these premier journals. We survey the extent to which the top ranked authors and institutions network with practitioners in producing joint publications in these journals. By identifying the top ranked authors and institutions in OM, this study provides information that can be useful to stakeholders who may wish to engage in collaborative research with the leading agents, or pursue educational opportunities with them. The study also presents a profile of productivity levels and what it takes for authors and institutions to rank among the top tiers. In so doing, it offers insights into yearly publication rates and underlying trends—insights that can be useful in the context of promotion and tenure, faculty evaluations, and in assessing the standings of individuals and institutions relative to leadership benchmarks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We review the operations research/management science literature on data‐driven methods in retail operations. This line of work has grown rapidly in recent years, thanks to the availability of high‐quality data, improvements in computing hardware, and parallel developments in machine learning methodologies. We survey state‐of‐the‐art studies in three core aspects of retail operations—assortment optimization, order fulfillment, and inventory management. We then conclude the paper by pointing out some interesting future research possibilities for our community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Strategic Management Journal has published a series of articles on variation in business-segment performance. This comment addresses the insights and potential sources of confusion in the decomposition literature, with a particular focus on Ruefli and Wiggins (2003). We review the basic purpose of descriptive decomposition techniques and argue that they offer no information about the drivers of business performance or the mechanisms by which performance is generated. The techniques in the literature do not rely on ceteris paribus assumptions or a mapping between managerial influence and corporate effects. The estimated effects of industry, business segments, and corporate parents need not be independent to be modeled using variance decomposition. The comment also focuses on the distortions in estimates that can arise when the underlying sample of data does not represent the population accurately. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The microeconomic theory of the firm encompasses classical marginal analysis and modern operations research techniques. Yet, one finds a paucity of explicit application of microeconomics to corporate planning. In this paper we explore the reasons for the seeming void and develop an economic theory of corporate planning. Our main thesis is that received microeconomic theory focuses on answers, and answers stated in non-operational terms. Nonetheless, economic theory asks questions of central importance to the strategic choices of the firm. These questions arise from economic theory and the fundamental notion of trade-offs. We develop a microeconomic theory of strategic search for corporate planning. The theory is used to develop important questions and efficient search in lieu of chaotic and random search. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today, innovating with a user community seems an effective strategy for developing a firm's innovation capacity. However, short-term benefits from this collaboration are no longer sufficient, and firms are now looking to develop a sustainable relationship with users, to maintain sustainable innovation. This study furthers our understanding of the way in which a user toolkit connected to a community serves to manage innovation of an existing product or service. The literature provides a limited understanding of the role of a user toolkit in the management of a sustainable innovation approach in firms. The research is based on a longitudinal case study of the video game Trackmania, which has an integrated toolkit connected to a large and active user community. Results confirm the crucial role of the toolkit in the construction, control and maintenance of a sustainable innovative approach with a user community. From the innovation perspective, the toolkit can be considered as a means of managing the boundary between the firm and the user community, because it enables the community to structure itself as a multi-sided platform, where all categories of users participate in value creation. Finally, we identify four modalities for managing sustainable innovation with a user community toolkit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Many potential employers expect that newly hired students will arrive on-the-job with the ability to analyze data, utilize spreadsheets, and communicate findings and recommendations. We designed the Ocean State Circuits, Inc. Forecasting Project to address these gaps in our students' knowledge of analytical tools (such as the vlookup() function and pivot tables), their ability to write mathematical formulas in a spreadsheet, their understanding of more advanced data analysis features (e.g., regression, correlation), and their ability to communicate and present managerial conclusions. The exercise requires student teams to act as 'consultants' and utilize spreadsheets to analyze and forecast the demand for a hypothetical set of products and then communicate their findings to 'management' in a professionally formatted report document. A survey of students that have completed the exercise indicates that their knowledge level of the tools used in the project increased significantly from before to after they completed the case. Similarly, anecdotal feedback from employers suggests that students that have completed the exercise seem more capable of dissecting data when investigating business issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT This teaching brief describes a 30-minute game where student groups compete in-class in an introductory time-series forecasting exercise. The students are challenged to 'beat the instructor' who competes using forecasting techniques that will be subsequently taught. All forecasts are graphed prior to revealing the randomly generated actual demand. Experiential learning and forecasting exercises are reviewed before detailing how the game is administered and debriefed. Student survey results ( n = 247) provide evidence of teaching effectiveness, including that 78% of students said that playing the game increased their interest in learning the forecasting techniques that were used by the instructor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Chinese and American decision makers demonstrated significantly different biases while making newsvendor decisions in a laboratory experiment that utilizes the open-ended verbal protocol analysis approach. Chinese subjects (i) asked more questions before reaching their decision, which suggests that they are more cautious when making a decision; (ii) were more frequently able to come up with a new number as their decision whereas the American decision makers tended to use one of the given numbers as their decision; (iii) were more cognizant of salvage values and as a result ordered more than the American decision makers. Due to the open-ended, time-consuming nature of our experiment, our subject pool was small and thus we present these results as exploratory in nature and discuss directions that are worth further study in future experiments. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Cross-disciplinary research at the intersection of operations management and entrepreneurship offers the potential to generate new knowledge leading to tangible value for the firm. Likewise, themes such as the reliance on firm-external partnerships, the strong technology and innovation orientation, and the nurturing of dynamic capabilities, just to name a few, are on the agenda of both ‘camps.’ However, research at the nexus between the two disciplines is scarce. Over and above synthesizing the insights presented in the papers comprising this special issue, it is our intent to motivate richer and deeper explorations into this promising field of research. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This study aims to review the related literature on operations research (OR)/management science (MS) in the Arab world published during the last three decades. Owing to the nature of this study, an extensive survey of the related literature was conducted and inferences were drawn. The inferences drawn from the literature survey on OR/MS in the Arab world were first, there is a paucity of published real-world applications of OR/MS. Second, there is a lack of published survey-type studies in most Arab countries, except in Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, and the United Arab Emirates. Third, the majority of published works on OR/MS were of a conceptual nature. A few papers concerned with OR/MS in the Arab world were published during the 1980s, with a special emphasis on conceptual issues rather than on applied or survey-type studies. The 1990s witnessed an increased number of publications on both survey-type and conceptual studies. Since 2000, the number of publications has increased substantially, mainly through conceptual studies. This study has a number of implications for both practitioners and researchers. Practitioners will be made aware of the applications of OR/MS in the Arab world and the type of problems that have been addressed. This, in turn, might motivate the decision makers and the managers to adopt OR/MS approaches in solving their organizations' problems. As a result, this might increase the usage of OR/MS in this part of the world. Researchers will be able to identify the OR/MS research areas that need more attention in the Arab world. The study mainly covers the studies that are written in English and indexed in non-Arabic databases. Although the Arabic works were not surveyed exhaustively, the author reviewed and included some available OR/MS works written in Arabic. This study is considered as the first work of its type in surveying the scholarly publications pertaining to OR/MS in the Arab world since the 1980s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People with disabilities have a right to a full life in every sense and one of those fundamental rights is the possibility to work. In this paper, the importance of social employment integration of disabled people is highlighted as one of the stakeholders to be satisfied by companies in the new framework that corporate social responsibility is constructing. The objective of the paper is to revise the benefits of some well-known operations research/management science tools that, if applied correctly, have a double positive impact on work accessibility and improved productivity. The responses collected from managers of Valencia's Sheltered Work Centres for Disabled by means of a structured questionnaire are used to analyse the level of implementation of these tools and their impact depending on the type of centre, the kind of disability and other structural variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As emphasized in the Resource Manual to Support Application of the Protocol on Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) (United Nations Economic Commission for Europe Convention on environmental impact assessment in a Transboundary Context) in complex contexts, the SEA process has great potential in the development and comparison of alternatives. In this work, we discuss some roles and implications of operations research practice in the framework of this type of process. A case study, currently topical in Portugal, will be used to motivate and illustrate the presentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at implicit and explicit ethical aspects of research and decision making in complex issues that are characterized by combined systems and multi-actor complexities. These social–technical issues, called multi-actor systems, are so complex that researchers and decision makers need to reduce these complexities. This is mostly achieved by means of implicit assumptions of the research paradigms/methods chosen and explicit omission of multi-actor and/or system aspects. Many of these paradigmatic assumptions and boundary choices are in fact implicit and explicit ethical choices. The goals of this paper are to draw attention to these ethical choices, to reveal their underlying ethical theories and to reflect on appropriate locations and functions of ethics in different strands of multi-actor systems research and decision making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper tracks development trends in the literature on operations research (OR) and ethics from Kenneth Boulding's vision in 1966 of OR as a tool for benevolent decision making, and up to today's constructive papers in this special issue of ITOR. Although this review does not intend to give a complete picture of the relevant literature, two main themes stand out clearly: “Guidelines for the practice of OR” and “How can OR be applied for good purpose?” The first issue is about ethical principles and the second about ethical consequences. Although there is a continued interest in guidelines, few OR societies follow up with their own guidelines, and only a limited number of papers report on the ethicality of real OR applications in relation to guidelines. On the other hand, there is an increasing interest in OR as a tool for benevolent decision making, as we can witness in this special issue of ITOR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the incorporation of the research plan, the Arsenic Rule, Stage 2 D/DBPR and the LT2ESWTR. It states that the incorporation results and objectives will depend on category of research. Moreover, the research tasks related with treatment were integrated more frequently than those which focus on natural events.

Manufacturers are increasingly utilizing Internet-based tools to more readily conduct collaborative activities with key business customers. While the emerging conventional wisdom suggests that the greater the extent to which manufacturers engage in Internet-enabled commerce with downstream business customers the better the performance, we espouse an alternative view. Consistent with the relational view of competitive advantage and contingency theory, we develop a model and a series of hypotheses that specify how various product and market characteristics may influence the nature of the expected positive relationship between e-collaboration and performance. To test the model, we collected data from 50 manufacturers using a Web-based survey. Our partial least squares (PLS) analysis results do indeed support the notion that e-collaboration is related to better operational and business performance. However, we go on to show that the strength of the relationship between e-collaboration and operational performance diminishes as the level of environmental munificence increases. Notably, we found no such moderating effect with respect to the level of product complexity or market variability. Our findings contribute to the operations strategy literature on supply chain relationships in the e-business arena and offer managers a framework for understanding the conditions under which investments in e-collaboration may be more appropriate and therefore more beneficial. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This essay and the following commentaries address the use of theory in operations management. While much is said about theory in the typical journal article, theory, as science defines it, is not at the center of much of our research. The discipline had fallen into some bad habits. This essay and its commentaries appeal for more attention to what theory can mean for our understanding of operations management. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The development of a range of management science methodologies (MSMs) such as ‘soft’ operational research (OR) has been a feature of the UK OR practice over the last decades. This paper suggests that the increasing number of soft approaches developed in the UK is a direct consequence of the pragmatism in management education and management practice in Britain; and of the development of a robust British systems movement that has been engaged with the British OR community. Rationalism prevalent in French management education has kept OR/MS practice biased towards the hard end of MSM. We explore the usage of hard and soft methods and present results of a mailed survey administered to a small sample of British and French MBA graduates working in consultancy. Results reflect features of British and French business culture and management education; and indicate the different directions taken by the MS/OR movements in these two countries. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper empirically examines whether operational slack, business diversification, geographic diversification, and vertical relatedness influence the stock market reaction to supply chain disruptions. The results are based on a sample of 307 supply chain disruptions announced by publicly traded firms during 1987–1998. Our analysis shows that firms with more slack in their supply chain experience less negative stock market reaction. The extent of business diversification has no significant effect on the stock market reaction. Firms that are more geographically diversified experience a more negative stock market reaction. We find that firms with a high degree of vertical relatedness experience a less negative stock market reaction. These results have important implications on how firms design and operate their supply chains to mitigate the negative effect of supply chain disruptions. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Conceptually, systems thinking (ST) and knowledge management (KM) seem to share similar grounds. At the level of practice, there is some evidence, if still patchy, that established systemic methodologies (SM) developed in the UK have been informing KM practice. This paper discusses the conceptual links between ST and KM, exploring the theoretical approaches that were embedded in the early KM literature. A survey of journals from both systems practice and KM areas is carried out to assess the exposure of SM in KM articles. Titles and abstracts of papers published in a sample of management science (MS)/operational research (OR) and KM journals between 1995 and 2005 were queried for the occurrence of SM typical keywords in order to identify articles that have used ST in general and a SM in particular. Results suggest that methods such as systems dynamics, complexity theory, soft systems methodology, viable systems model and critical systems have started to become visible in KM applications; we discuss some of these articles focusing on the methodological orientations of the approaches used. The paper aims to raise KM and systemic practice researchers' awareness of the benefits of further exchange and conversation between these two fields of management. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Past research (Kruger, Wirtz, Van Boven, & Altermatt, 2004) proposed that people use the effort of the producer as a heuristic for the quality of the product. In contrast, two experiments show that consumers'' inferences from effort information are highly malleable. Participants were either explicitly exposed to one of two applicable naive theories (“good-art-takes-effort” vs. “good-art-takes-talent”) or the order of judgment was reversed (quality judgment first vs. talent judgment first) to activate different naive theories more subtly. In both cases, participants only inferred high quality from high effort when an “effort” theory was rendered accessible, but not when a “talent” theory was rendered accessible. We conclude that judgment tasks prime naive theories that can serve as inference rules, illustrating that heuristics can be constructed on the spot. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Recent trends have sparked companies to take a loser look at “back-of-the-house” operations—where dangerous problems often lurk undetected. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents dynamic server assignment policies in finite-capacity queuing systems with flexible and collaborative servers, which involve an assembly or a disassembly operation. It attempts to maximize the steady-state throughput. The article characterizes the optimal policy for a Markovian system with two servers, two feeder stations, and instantaneous assembly and disassembly operations.

Operations Research (OR) has made major contributions in the developed world to public policy domains that are of great relevance to Africa. Inasmuch as OR has failed to live up to its potential for addressing such issues in Africa, a principal barrier may have been distance between OR analysts and decision makers. However, the revolution in management science instruction and potential to train end-user modelers has democratized OR. This makes training for policy makers and managers in the public and non-profit sectors in Africa both feasible and highly beneficial. Existing management science courses for public and non-profit leaders, such as those taught at Carnegie Mellon's Heinz School, could be adapted to fit the needs of educators and policy makers in Africa and disseminated via a “train the trainers” approach. A plan is sketched whereby 800,000 end-user modelers might be trained in Africa (one for every 1000 people) at an annual cost of about $5 million/year. Such budgets are well within the range of investments in human capital formation currently being made in Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For many years, the author has been involved in teaching and research in the use of Operations Research as a tool of analysis to study food security problems in sub-Saharan Africa, in particular, grass root problems of poor farmers. The paper presents an introduction to the way Operations Research methods have been applied in case studies and research projects, and discusses in retrospect the author's views on the strengths and limitations of the application of Operations Research. The paper has in particular been written for people who are not familiar with applications of Operations Research in agriculture, and are interested to learn about its potential usefulness in practice. The retrospective part is largely based on food security studies in e.g. Tanzania, Burkina Faso, Bénin, Togo and Eritrea and on participation in several interdisciplinary research programmes in Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider two parallel M/ M/ N/ N queues. Thus there are N servers in each queue and no waiting line(s). The network is fed by a single Poisson arrival stream of rate λ, and the 2 N servers are identical exponential servers working at rate μ. A new arrival is routed to the queue with the smaller number of occupied servers. If both have the same occupancy then the arrival is routed randomly, with the probability of joining either queue being 1/2. This model may be viewed as the shortest queue version of the classic Erlang loss model. If all 2 N servers are occupied further arrivals are turned away and lost. We let and . We study this model both numerically and asymptotically. For the latter we consider heavily loaded systems (ρ→∞) with a comparably large number of servers ( with . We obtain asymptotic approximations to the joint steady state distribution of finding m servers occupied in the first queue and n in the second. We also consider the marginal distribution of the number of occupied servers in the second queue, as well as some conditional distributions. We show that aspects of the solution are much different according as or . The asymptotic approximations are shown to be quite accurate numerically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Services are now a larger portion of the economy than manufacturing for every nation on Earth, and services are an overwhelming portion of Western economies. While decision-making research has begun responding to this change, much of the scholarly work still addresses manufacturing issues. Particularly revealing is the field of operations management (OM), in which the proportion of manuscripts dedicated to services has been estimated at 3%, 6%, and 7.5% by various authors. We investigate several possible reasons for the neglect of services in research, including the difficulty in defining services, viewing services as derivative activities, a lack of defined processes, a lack of scale in services, and the effect of variability on service performance. We argue that times have changed, and none of these reasons is valid anymore. We sound the warning that failure to emphasize services in our research and teaching may signal the decline of the discipline. We note the proportion of OM faculty in business schools has shrunk in the past 10 years. Finally, we examine a selection of service research agendas and note several directions for high-impact, innovative research to revitalize the decision sciences. With practitioners joining the call for more research in services, the academic community has an exciting opportunity to embrace services and reshape its future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The lack of concern in operational research (OR) with the processes that are associated with the work of analysts has recently been recognised as a ‘process lacuna’. However, the broader and related field of management and organisation studies contains elements upon which an understanding of these processes may be constructed. The focus of these elements is the understanding of knowledge and its use in organisations. In this paper these elements are identified, brought together, and shown to generate a means of reducing the process lacuna in OR, specifically by demonstrating how they enable an exploration of the character of knowledge in OR and the processes associated with its production, dissemination, and legitimisation. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Six Sigma as a quality improvement framework cannot remain static if it is to sustain its value for businesses beyond the first waves of applications. This paper explores the possibilities of enhancing the usefulness and effectiveness of Six Sigma by the integration of established Operations Research/Management Science (OR/MS) techniques. In this paper, we elucidate the needs for OR/MS techniques to enhance Six Sigma deployment in operational and transactional environments and propose a new training roadmap for core Six Sigma professionals (Six Sigma Black Belts) which incorporates these techniques. A matrix relating the components of the proposed training curriculum to the actual deliverables during implementation for a hybrid of operational and transactional environments is also presented. A practical case study is also presented to demonstrate the usefulness of the OR/MS tools in a typical transactional environment. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In the 1980 inaugural issue of the Journal of Operations Management, Powell and Johnson stressed the need to introduce behavioral factors into research models of operational processes and performance. While some progress has been made since then, contemporary authors argue that limited dialogue between operations management and behavioral researchers continues to restrict the interpretability of such studies. Drawing on expertise from both operations and behavioral research, and motivated by a case example, we intend to further this dialogue. In doing so, we outline interdisciplinary commonalities and several methodological pitfalls that those studying the links between resource constraints and operational performance should take into account when developing new research. These issues range from appropriate model conceptualization to operationalization for empirical studies. Recommendations for appropriately confronting methodological concerns related to these issues are provided. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper examines quantitatively the effect of modeling assumptions on transit signal priority (TSP) control in mixed mode operation. The primary sources of delays to buses at intersections are queues formed at intersections (queuing delay) and traffic signals (signal delay). We show that models based on point queues and models based on spatial queues would lead to different control strategies and yield different results for the benefit to buses in terms of delay reduction. Situations in which the spatial content of queues is crucial to modeling TSP systems are identified in the paper. We conclude that given that models with the spatial queue representation are more realistic in capturing the queuing dynamics at intersections they should be incorporated in the decision-making process for initiating priority calls in a TSP system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article profiles the biography of Stafford Beer, an innovative operational research practitioner, intellectual leader in the development of systems ideas, and founder of the field of management cybernetics. The article briefs the various awards and recognitions Stafford Beer has achieved and involvement in various roles with key positions. The article also describes Stafford Beer's association with various people and organizations. It presents innovative and original views of his written works on cybernetic technology and his impact on management and systems.

Personnel assignment problems have traditionally been solved using operations research (OR) methods. The purpose of the research was to demonstrate the value of taking a systems view of personnel assignment beyond the usual OR models. Human factors methodologies and research methods were used to describe and analyze the components of the personnel assignment process at a printing company. These included macroergonomics, human–computer interaction, the skills–rules–knowledge (SRK) framework, hierarchical task analysis, decision ladders, and abstraction decomposition spaces. This approach facilitated assessments for function allocation and work system design, which are argued to be necessary for successful implementations of any solution for personnel assignment problems. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Hum Factors Man 16: 285–307, 2006. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article develops a new approach for constructing causal maps called the Collective Causal Mapping Methodology (CCMM). This methodology collects information asynchronously from a group of dispersed and diverse subject-matter experts via Web technologies. Through three rounds of data collection, analysis, mapping, and interpretation, CCMM constructs a parsimonious collective causal map. The article illustrates the CCMM by constructing a causal map as a teaching tool for the field of operations management. Causal maps are an essential tool for managers who seek to improve complex systems in the areas of quality, strategy, and information systems. These causal maps are known by many names, including Ishikawa (fishbone) diagrams, cause-and-effect diagrams, impact wheels, issue trees, strategy maps, and risk-assessment mapping tools. Causal maps can be used by managers to focus attention on the root causes of a problem, find critical control points, guide risk management and risk mitigation efforts, formulate and communicate strategy, and teach the fundamental causal relationships in a complex system. Only two basic methods for creating causal maps are available to managers today—brainstorming and interviews. However, these methods are limited, particularly when the subject-matter experts cannot easily meet in the same place at the same time. Managers working with complex systems across large, geographically dispersed organizations can employ the CCMM presented here to efficiently and effectively construct causal maps to facilitate improving their systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study on the growth of one elementary teacher's science pedagogical content knowledge over a period of 10 years. In this study, researchers have offered three interrelated sets of criteria as heuristics for judging the quality of research. These sets are concerned with strength, sharing and service. The strength criteria refer to the truthfulness of the data obtained and the integrity of the research process. Researchers found that teachers concentrate on reactions and behaviors of students more than aspects of their own performance during instruction and need to be able to understand students to facilitate learning. The findings of this study suggest ways in which elementary teachers can be supported in teaching science at all phases of their early careers. Most importantly, the study has shown that the science subject-matter knowledge base that beginning teachers bring with them to the elementary school is all they have to work with for some time. Science subject-matter knowledge needs to be sufficiently robust to survive the time when the beginning teacher strives to develop general teacher and interactive knowledge bases.

Consider two departments of a government each serving customers of a particular type. We explore conditions under which a reorganization leading to both departments serving both types of customers leads to an enhancement of“efficiency” defined in terms of the expected queue size in a stochstic equilibrium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a profile of Russell L. Ackoff, Anheuser-Busch Professor Emeritus of Management Science at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Russell Ackoff has had a distinguished career in operational research (OR) both as an academic and as a practitioner. His influence on the early development of the discipline in the U.S. and in Great Britain in the 1950s and 1960s is hard to over-estimate. However, by the 1970s he had become trenchant in his criticisms of technique-dominated OR, and powerfully advocated more participative approaches. In 1964, Ackoff moved to the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, where he set up a series of graduate programs that moved progressively away from OR's quantitative/computational norm. In parallel, he headed a sequence of research centres funded by his outstanding success in selling projects to business. Some of the books written by Ackoff are: "Operations Research and National Planning" and "The Meaning, Scope and Methods of Operations Research."

Discusses the technique for demonstrating how cognitive heuristics affect decision making. Definition of cognitive heuristics; Discussion of a technique for improving decision making; Development of concepts that enhances critical thinking and problem solving skills.

Discusses teaching courses related to decision sciences that can be used to introduce game theory and ethics. Introduction of a quantitative modeling framework; Rules to begin the discussion of game theory; Use of Web site to introduce game theory and ethical decision.

This study investigates, published simulation studies in operations management (OM) that are empirically based. The results of the study are based on an exhaustive search of twenty leading operations management journals over the period from 1970 to 2000. Approximately, 600 published simulation studies in operations management were identified, but only 85 of these were subsequently identified as being empirical in nature. The 85 articles were next classified into one of 17 categories. Results by journal, topic, time period, and combinations of these factors are reported. Finally, opportunities for future research are discussed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Presents information concerning the field of service management. Importance of studying and understanding all aspects of service management; Role of services in today's economy; Discussion on the themes of the articles featured in the June 2004 issue of the journal "Decision Sciences"; Research opportunities in service management.

This work presents a stochastic simulation model and experimentation for a toll system developed for a highly concurred highway toll in Venezuela, followed by a discussion of performance and economic indicators. Although mathematical models for resource problems have been developed, their use is not widespread, particularly in developing countries were toll systems are manually operated. The main objective of TollSim is to start building an infrastructure and infostructure to be used in a decision support system for management of traffic related issues in a technologically excluded region. The model was developed using an object-oriented approach and implemented in MODSIM-III, SIMGRAPHICSII and SIMDRAW. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we report a prospective evaluation process for a major research program for the Finnish forestry and forest industries. To a significant extent, this process was based on fifteen participatory workshops where tools of operational research — most notably multi-criteria methods embedded in a group support system — were deployed to help representatives from industry, the research community, and public administration in the assessment of socio-economic impacts and the identification of further research topics. Drawing upon this case study, we also analyze the preconditions, advantages, and limitations of similar kinds of participatory processes in the implementation of formative and summative evaluations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to develop a better tool for the assessment of the management performance of research and development (R&D) activities in research-oriented universities, a combination of analysis hierarchical process (AHP) and data envelopment analysis (DEA) is proposed for the assessment of the efficiency of R&D management activities in universities. The measure consists of the measurement of a university's previous and present R&D strength by AHP and the assessment of the relative efficiency of its growth in R&D strength against those of other universities by DEA, in which the management basis of the measured universities is taken into consideration. The application of the measure to assess the R&D management efficiency of 29 universities in China indicates the universities which have improved their management work achieved a high efficiency value regardless of whether their original R&D strengths were strong or weak. Such a measure is proved to be helpful for motivating the universities to keep on improving their R&D management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper is part of the efforts made by the authors in recent years to develop strategic control and planning instruments in corporations using OR-techniques like system dynamics, control theory, and group multicriteria decision aid. A more general framework called ‘adaptive control methodology’ (ACM) combines all these techniques. It has been presented in several papers. The objective of the present analysis is to calibrate this instrument and to tune it to the corporate needs by analysing real-world applications. More specifically, several case studies have been investigated in large multinational organisations in the food sector. An acquisition case has been used for the calibration purpose. It is analysed in the paper from the ACM perspective to provide additional material for revisiting and improving the methodology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]