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Talking Point This section provides the opportunity to voice your opinion. Add your comment and it will be included below... James MacManus Asks... Effective decision making within organisations is crucial and techniques such as OR are brilliant at assisting with the detail of sorting priorities and checking and analysing information. However, as any experienced salesperson will tell you, decisions are hugely influenced by perceptions, emotions, previous experiences, core values, social influence, hidden agendas, game-playing behaviour, people's abilities to cope with uncertainty, their attitudes to risk/speculation/the cautionary principle e.t.c. Marry to this the errors of logic we all tend to make (e.g. confirming the consequent) and modern research on how cognitive biases influence economic behaviour and I can't help but conclude that formal analysis techniques comprise only one element of what constitutes everyday decision making. Shouldn't the discipline of 'decision science' reflect this and incorporate both the hard (OR) and soft (psychological) elements of real life decision making? Graham Sharp responds.. Thank for your contribution to Talking Point. I think that, in the UK, the Operational Research community is broadly in agreement with your sentiment. Things are somewhat different in the USA where 'soft' methods seem to be more rarely used. The OR Society membership includes many distinguished academics and practitioners of 'soft' O.R. and we run a number of courses on 'soft' methods such as Problem Structuring, Strategic Choice Approach and Using Soft Systems Methodology (SSM). As you suggest, evidence based 'hard' O.R. tools are very valuable but 'soft' methods are also widely used here. ------------------------ Is your approach to decision making holding your organisation back? The world’s most successful executives are the ones that make the boldest decisions with less risk and better outcomes. The OR Society’s Gordon Johnson explains below how O.R. can help you to do the same. Gordon Johnson explains... We all have to make decisions based on ‘gut-feel’ sometimes but it’s best to avoid making too many decisions based on ‘gut-feel’ alone. Executives in every kind of organisation – large and small, private and public, for-profit and not-for-profit – are using O.R. to structure their problems, unlock the value in their data, model complex systems and make better decisions with less risk. Whether O.R. is used to inform high-level strategy or improve day-to-day operations, the results speak for themselves: Insight into difficult problems; improved processes, productivity and performance; millions in cost savings and increased revenues; accurate predictions and forecasts…and so on. What can you do? Solving problems associated with determining the most effective strategy for a business is very complex. You may need expert help. O.R. professionals are skilled in determining and deploying the most appropriate analytical tools, have the capability of understanding the broad business implications of their work and can communicate their findings clearly and cogently. When considering any particular business problem, O.R. practitioners can determine the most beneficial inputs into models as well as analyse and use the outputs. They have the ability to select relevant data and information to structure the most appropriate inputs to build models. They are also skilled in knowing what to leave out of models so making them less complex and easier to understand and use whilst still giving the appropriate level of insight. Practitioners are attached to the OR Society in the UK and more information can be obtained by getting in touch with The Society. Gordon Johnson |
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