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Behavioral Operational Research: Theory, Methodology and Practice PDF

412 Pages·2017·9.806 MB·English
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EDITED BY MARTIN KUNC, JONATHAN MALPASS AND LEROY WHITE BEHAVIORAL OPERATIONAL RESEARCH Theory, Methodology and Practice Behavioral Operational Research Martin K unc • Jonathan Malpass • Leroy White Editors Behavioral Operational Research Theory, Methodology and Practice Editors Martin Kunc Leroy White Warwick Business School Warwick Business School University of Warwick University of Warwick Coventry , United Kingdom Coventry , United Kingdom Jonathan Malpass BT Technology, Service & Operations Martlesham Heath , United Kingdom ISBN 978-1-137-53549-8 ISBN 978-1-137-53551-1 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-53551-1 Library of Congress Control Number: 2016936719 © Th e Editor(s) (if applicable) and Th e Author(s) 2016 Th e author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identifi ed as the author(s) of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Th is work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifi cally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfi lms or in any other physical way, and trans- mission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. Th e use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifi c statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. Th e publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. Printed on acid-free paper Th is Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature Th e registered company is Macmillan Publishers Ltd. London Introduction to the Book S tudents in university courses on management often fi nd disciplinary silos as tall and impregnable as the silos in many corporations. Most operational research and management science (OR/MS) courses focus on the ‘physics’ of factories and other systems and teach how to fi nd optimal policies; people play little role in these models, and where they appear they are usually assumed to be the perfectly rational, self- interested maximizers central to economics. At the same time, courses in organizational behavior, human resources, and leadership focus on the foibles and failings of humans in social settings, where decisions are imperfect and biased; learning is slow or absent; people are swayed by social pressures; and values, norms and emotions play a central role. In these courses, however, there is little role for the physics of complex operations. Th e result is contradiction, confusion, and a self-reinforcing pathology: How often have you been told, ‘Th at’s a marketing problem,’ ‘Th at’s an operations problem,’ ‘Th at’s a human resources problem,’ and ‘Whatever you do, don’t bring your personal problems to work’? But we don’t have marketing problems, operations problems, fi nancial problems and people problems; we don’t have workplace issues, personal problems and family problems. We just have problems. We create these boundaries and impose these categories on the world to simplify its overwhelming v vi Introduction to the Book complexity. Some boundaries are necessary and inevitable. But all too often, the invisible boundaries in our minds cut off critical feedbacks, deny us the insights of people with diff erent experience and perspec- tives, and breed arrogance about our ability to control nature and other people—and then our problems grow worse. Fortunately, over the past few decades, scholars in fi elds including operations management, economics, organizations psychology and oth- ers have engaged in fruitful and often intense debate over core assump- tions “such as rationality” and have begun to collaborate fruitfully. New fi elds integrating these disciplines, such as behavioral economics, behav- ioral fi nance and behavioral operations, have emerged, and their insights are being applied by fi rms and governments at the highest levels. Interest in understanding both human behavior in practice and how to capture it in models and analysis is growing. Experiments and theory increasingly recognize aspects of individual behavior such as decision-making heuris- tics and biases, bounded rationality and misperceptions of feedback, as well as the ways in which these attributes of human behavior both shape and are shaped by the physical and institutional systems in which we are embedded. Behavioral issues in operations management and OR are especially rel- evant today. Th e global economic crisis that began in 2007–8 revealed important interactions among organizational failure, weak policy and strategy, and our lack of understanding of the ways our organizational processes and operational systems, from fi nancial markets to global sup- ply chains, actually operate. Behaviorally realistic models have never been more important. Students and practitioners of OR need to understand the implications of behavioral OR. How can organizations incorporate behavioral factors to model the impact of an intervention? What are the implications for models and management if the all-too-human people in organizations use decision-making shortcuts and heuristics and suff er from biases? What are the implications of behavioral issues for the OR toolkit and training? Th is book, B ehavioral Operational Research, is a timely look at behav- ioral matters in organizational life. Th e book does not promote behav- Introduction to the Book vii ioral OR as a magic potion for today’s organizational ills. Instead, the book surveys critical current issues that researchers, students and practitioners are tackling as they break down the silos across disciplines and integrate models of processes and systems with realistic assumptions about the behavior of the people who work in, manage and design those systems. John Sterman Jay W. Forrester Professor of Management, MIT Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA Prefa ce Th is book is a collection of articles on Behavioral Operational Research. It arose from a number of events and conferences highlighting a resur- gence of interest in Operational Research (OR) and the behavioral sci- ences. It was clear from these events that behavior, its representation in models and its eff ects on how users respond to models, is attracting the attention of OR researchers and practitioners. Th is current growth in interest, in our view, also stems from the long observed gap in behavioral issues in a wide sense, coupled with the emergence of a set of methods that promise the potential of being able to address behavioral concerns. While the fi eld of OR has been aware of the relevance of behavioral issues for a long time now, it might be said to have danced around them. So, the interest in behavior is not new, nor does the resurgence of interest represent a “revolution”. What may be novel is the emergence of a set of ideas and methods from other areas, such as economics and psychology, that may allow a more rigorous approach to addressing behavioral issues within the OR fi eld, perhaps with more focus on the use of laboratory and fi eld experiments of individual and team decision-making. In par- ticular, based on related concerns in economics and psychology, we are witnessing developments in the fi eld as being shaped through the integra- tion of insights from psychological research into OR theory and meth- ods, especially concerning human judgment and decision-making under uncertainty and establishing more experimental approaches as a tool in ix

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