Organiser: Alberto Paucar-Caceres
11/09/2018, 13:30, Room - Private 2 Code: OR60A3361 Using Soft OR Techniques in Developing an Evidence Strategy and to Prioritise Work within the Labour Market Area in DWP
Dr Tanya Powell (Dept for Work and Pensions)
The DWP Analytical Community has developed an Evidence Strategy approach to understanding where the gaps are in our evidence base and looking at how we fill those gaps. This has contributed to the publication of the DWP Areas of Research Interest (ARI), which can be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/dwp-areas-of-research-interest. Within the Labour Market area of work, we have brought together analyst and policy colleagues, both from the Labour Market area of expertise and from other areas, to review and build our strategy. We have used a range of Soft OR approaches within workshops, including Rich Pictures, cognitive mapping, purposeful activity statements, and some elements of Theory of Change (developed by the Social Research profession) This has enabled us to bring together a broad range of views and experiences to develop an agreed strategy, which we have used to prioritise our work going forward, allowing us to balance short and long term work priorities. This presentation will cover some of the approaches we used, what worked and what didn’t, and how we managed some of the approaches across a range of media, including face to face, over video conferences, through computer based Lync systems, and combinations of them all. What is the nature of your talk? Practical
Does your talk require prior knowledge of the subject area? A little Is your talk accessible and relevant to practitioners? Highly
11/09/2018, 14:00, Room - Private 2 Code: OR60A3445 Using Adaptive Red Teaming to Explore Enabler Issues
Miss Julia Piotto and Mrs Patricia Dexter (Defence Science and Technology Group)
Land Capability Analysis of the Australian Defence Science & Technology Group conducted three studies leveraging adaptive red teaming to explore force structure issues and options relating to provision of enabler capability for the Army. Adaptive red teaming, grounded in judgement based operations research, was used to provide high-quality contestable outputs through minimising biases and group think as well as maximising alternative perspectives and critical analysis. These contributed to Army submissions to the Australian Army’s Chief of Army Senior Advisory Committee for decision making regarding enabler capability. The first study compared the current structure of the Australian Army Reserve with proposed force structures using a workshop of all stakeholders. Issues with the structures were extracted and
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assumptions identified. These contributed to a consolidated structural proposal. The second study identified key issues with a proposed concept for altering the structure of Australian Army combat brigades and associated enabler functions. A larger number of stakeholders were engaged through remote and distributed consultation using a survey method grounded in Delphi principles. The third study identified issues surrounding the generation of enabler mass for the Australian Army and subsequently explored options to address these issues. The study used multiple overlapping techniques of data collection and analysis from the adaptive red teaming space to generate the required outputs. These included workshops and surveys grounded in Delphi principles to undertake relationship mapping, functional and goal tree analysis, factor and causal map analysis, nodal analysis, option generation and critical option analysis. The application of the methods described above and an assessment of how suitable they were for each of these studies will be the discussion of this presentation.
What is the nature of your talk? Practical
Does your talk require prior knowledge of the subject area? A little Is your talk accessible and relevant to practitioners? Somewhat
11/09/2018, 14:30, Room - Private 2 Code: OR60A3450 The Development of Soft Operational Research over the Last 40 Years: Mapping Themes and Concepts
Mrs Leila Abuabara (UNIFESP/ITA) and Mr Alberto Paucar-Caceres (Manchester Metropolitan University Business School)
Operational Research and its allied field Management Science established themselves in the early 50s by embracing the optimisation paradigm and championing the development of ‘solving methods’ based on mathematical modelling, optimization and iterative computing tools. These became associated with classic operational research techniques and the so called ‘hard’ approaches. In the 70's, the optimization paradigm started to be challenged and a new paradigm based on learning emerged. Advocates of this paradigm (mainly from the UK) claim that to tackle complexity a set of methodologies capable of considering the different perspectives of the actors involved as well as the context of the situation was needed. These management science methods tried to alleviate/dissolve problems rather than solving them, focusing on learning (and understanding human and socio-cultural aspects) rather than optimizing. In general, the set of methodologies adhering to this are: ‘Soft’ Operational Research /Problem Structuring Methods; Behavioral Operational Research and their derivatives especially in terms of multi-methodology practices. Over the last decades the use of these methodologies has grown amongst OR academics and practitioners. This paper focuses on analysing the development such methodologies by using content analysis through a text mining tool software called Leximancer, a software tool that identifies word concepts/themes based in their proximity in the text. We use a database composed by title- abstract-keyword of scientific articles and conference proceedings published over the last 40 years (1980-2018). The result of the analysis are maps of clusters of concepts/themes including information on the strength of the relationships among the themes; this enables to gain both of a wide overview and a rich understanding of the OR development over those years. The paper offers an exploration and interpretation of such maps bringing intellectual rigour to the analysis and knowledge discovery on Soft OR through time.
What is the nature of your talk? A mix
Does your talk require prior knowledge of the subject area? A little Is your talk accessible and relevant to practitioners? Relevant
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12/09/2018, 16:00, Room - Bowland Hall S Code: OR60A3462 Developing a Generic Problem Structuring Method: the Philosophical, Theoretical and Methodological Development of WASAN from the Specific, to the Generic
Dr Chris Smith (University of Manchester)
This paper considers the philosophical, theoretical and methodical development of the context- specific approach WASAN into an approach that could be considered a generic problem structuring method. The Nuclear Installations Inspectorate commissioned the development of WASAN to analyse the reduction of avoidable radioactive waste. Such, it was developed with a very specific context in mind, adhering to specific regulations and using a particular jargon. The concept of waste reduction is useful for a wider set of clients, such this paper looks at how WASAN was developed to be used in a UK Police Force contact centre. WASAN was developed through an action research programme through 10 learning loops, providing learning about the area of concern, the methodology WASAN and the framework of ideas underpinning this. The focus of this paper is the learning related to the developing WASAN generically. This focusses on two important issues, first does WASAN exhibit the properties of other PSMs, shown through the 4 pillar framework. Second, focusses on the different classes of elements within the WASAN methodology that are required for it to be generically applicable. That is it can be applied to a variety of problem contexts without the need for further methodological development. Here the paper distinguishes between two classes of elements, those which required consistent replication regardless of context; termed methodological elements. Second, those which allow an approach to be applicable to the local context thereby bridging the gap between the problem context and methodology; we term these contextual elements. What is the nature of your talk? A mix
Does your talk require prior knowledge of the subject area? A little Is your talk accessible and relevant to practitioners? Somewhat
12/09/2018, 16:30, Room - Bowland Hall S Code: OR60A3490 Using SSM to Clarify the Role(s) of Personal Tutoring in Higher Education
Dr Stephen Powell and Dr Alicia Prowse (Manchester Metropolitan University)
Using SSM in any situation includes navigating the social and political dimensions (Analyses 2 and 3) that arise from multiple actors involved and the power relationships between them. In a higher education institution where ‘academic freedom’ means that models of change management are often loosely applied, this is a particular challenge. An extensive body of literature focuses on the high degree of autonomy that academics have traditionally had, being eroded by increased levels of management, with one view being that “there is a privileging of the general knowledge of those promoting change over locally held knowledge” (Blackmore and Kandiko 2012, p.113). In this paper, the tension between central management and the operational teaching functions of the university is discussed in the context of an SSM inspired change initiative. The established Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) (as described in Checkland and Poulter (2006)) was used to address the ‘messy situation’ of the role(s) of personal tutoring in an institution of Higher Education in the UK. Using activity models and an idealised purpose statement, an institution- wide conversation was instigated and pursued, resulting in some ‘actions to improve’, including a cross-institutional framework for personal tutoring. Reflection on the key social and political issues that were raised during the course of the investigation has helped develop a more rounded picture of insights gained into this complex activity. For example, a realisation that consistency of communications to staff and students would best be located in a single functional area of the organisation, does not
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necessarily result in this coming to pass. The paper will be presented as a case study that discusses and identifies the key practical, political and cultural issues in using an SSM in similar organisational contexts. The project was undertaken for the HEFCE-funded Interventions for Success programme.
What is the nature of your talk? A mix
Does your talk require prior knowledge of the subject area? A little Is your talk accessible and relevant to practitioners? Very
12/09/2018, 17:00, Room - Bowland Hall S Code: OR60A3573 The Role of Stakeholders in OR Interventions - Evidence From JORS
Mr Harry Kogetsidis (University of Nicosia)
Within the field of OR a lot of attention has been drawn on the role of stakeholders. OR started as a collaborative discipline which placed particular interest on how different people view complex problems in organisations and society. This interest in multiple views and perceptions gained pace with the development of soft OR and problem structuring methods and more recently critical systems thinking. This paper looks into how articles published in JORS have approached the issue of the role of stakeholders in OR interventions. The paper aims to examine the trends in relation to how stakeholders are viewed during the OR process so that a better understanding of the contribution of OR as a problem solving discipline can be made. What is the nature of your talk? A mix
Does your talk require prior knowledge of the subject area? Some Is your talk accessible and relevant to practitioners? Relevant
12/09/2018, 17:30, Room - Bowland Hall S Code: OR60A3580 Problem Structuring Methods and Multi-Methodology in Latin America: A Survey of Applications
Prof Maria Alejandra Castellini and Miss Melany Segarra Marinetti (Universidad de Belgrano) The development of Soft Operational Research (or Problem Structuring Methods (PSM)) in Europe, the USA and other countries has been surveyed and discussed in various studies. This has not been the case of the Latin America (LA) region, even though there is some anecdotal evidence that since the mid 80 when Soft OR was at the peak of its popularity approximately, academics and practitioners LA have adopted these methodologies in particular Checkland’s soft systems methodology. A quick review of OR and Systems journals also reveals that other PSM have been used in LA setting. This paper seeks to ascertain the degree of PSM applications in LA and discuss its development with the view to compare it with the development of PSM in other parts of the world, in particular in Europe. We surveyed PSM articles in abstracts in MS/OR Journals between 1980-2018. The OR journals surveyed were: European Journal of Operational Research, Journal of Operational Research society, Omega and International Transactions in Operations Research. In addition, we surveyed two journals from the systems thinking field: Systemic Research and Behavioral Science and Systemic Practice and Action Research. We do not include US-based journals: Management Science, Operation Research and Interfaces because previous studies have indicated the almost non- existence of PSM applications published in these journals. The initial results indicate that Brazil is the country where more PSM applications were published. Brazilian researchers have published mainly applications using Value Focusing Thinking, Cognitive and Conceptual maps, as well as Group Decision Making, SSM, multi-methodology and conceptual papers. There are
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some papers published by Colombian, Peruvian, Venezuelan, Chilean, Bolivian and Argentinean authors, working together with UK researchers on PSM, Multi-methodology OR and Viable System Model applications. For the rest of LA countries, our survey suggest that the activity is either limited or non-existent.
What is the nature of your talk? Theoretical
Does your talk require prior knowledge of the subject area? Some Is your talk accessible and relevant to practitioners? Relevant
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