IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jomega/v37y2009i3p615-623.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Ackoff's Fables revisited: stories to inform operational research practice

Author

Listed:
  • Klein, Jonathan H.

Abstract

This paper considers Ackoff's Fables, a set of short stories published by Ackoff in 1978 as guides to creative problem solving. The paper argues that storytelling of this kind contributes usefully to management and MS/OR education, before addressing how such Fables might be interpreted. It is demonstrated, using one of Ackoff's Fables, The Smart Jackass, for illustrative purposes, that interpretation of even apparently straightforward stories such as these is not unambiguous. The Fables can be interpreted in a multitude of different and sometimes contradictory ways, and the truths they might contain are not self-evident. Yet, as the basis for discussion, they still have much to offer as educational tools. The paper concludes with a discussion of literal truth in stories, and presents a classification of story types according to their relationship to literal truth.

Suggested Citation

  • Klein, Jonathan H., 2009. "Ackoff's Fables revisited: stories to inform operational research practice," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 37(3), pages 615-623, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jomega:v:37:y:2009:i:3:p:615-623
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305-0483(08)00041-8
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. J H Klein & N A D Connell & E Meyer, 2007. "Operational research practice as storytelling," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 58(12), pages 1535-1542, December.
    2. Cynthia Mathis Beath & Wanda J. Orlikowski, 1994. "The Contradictory Structure of Systems Development Methodologies: Deconstructing the IS-User Relationship in Information Engineering," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 5(4), pages 350-377, December.
    3. White, Leroy & Bourne, Humphrey, 2007. "Voices and values: Linking values with participation in OR/MS in public policy making," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 35(5), pages 588-603, October.
    4. L White & A Taket, 2000. "Exploring the use of narrative analysis as an operational research method: A case study in voluntary sector evaluation," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 51(6), pages 700-711, June.
    5. A Taket, 2002. "Facilitation: some contributions to theorising the practice of operational research," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 53(2), pages 126-136, February.
    6. Taylor, Frederick Winslow, 1911. "The Principles of Scientific Management," History of Economic Thought Books, McMaster University Archive for the History of Economic Thought, number taylor1911.
    7. Kaplan, Edward H., 2008. "Adventures in policy modeling! Operations research in the community and beyond," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 1-9, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. White, Leroy, 2016. "Behavioural operational research: Towards a framework for understanding behaviour in OR interventions," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 249(3), pages 827-841.
    2. Jeremy Atack & Robert A. Margo & Paul Rhode, 2020. "‘Mechanization Takes Command’: Inanimate Power and Labor Productivity in Late Nineteenth Century American Manufacturing," NBER Working Papers 27436, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Blackburn, Nivea & Brown, Judy & Dillard, Jesse & Hooper, Val, 2014. "A dialogical framing of AIS–SEA design," International Journal of Accounting Information Systems, Elsevier, vol. 15(2), pages 83-101.
    4. Shahla Ghobadi & John Campbell & Stewart Clegg, 2017. "Pair programming teams and high-quality knowledge sharing: A comparative study of coopetitive reward structures," Information Systems Frontiers, Springer, vol. 19(2), pages 397-409, April.
    5. N. I. Fisher & V. N. Nair, 2009. "Quality management and quality practice: Perspectives on their history and their future," Applied Stochastic Models in Business and Industry, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 25(1), pages 1-28, January.
    6. Diwas Singh KC & Bradley R. Staats, 2012. "Accumulating a Portfolio of Experience: The Effect of Focal and Related Experience on Surgeon Performance," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 14(4), pages 618-633, October.
    7. Lise Arena & Anthony Hussenot, 2021. "From Innovations at Work to Innovative Ways of Conceptualizing Organization: A Brief History of Organization Studies," Post-Print hal-03290300, HAL.
    8. repec:awi:wpaper:0421 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Bloom, Nick & Manova, Kalina & Teng Sun, Stephen & Van Reenen, John & Yu, Zhihong, 2018. "Managing trade: evidence from China and the US," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 88703, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    10. Mähring, Magnus, 2002. "IT Project Governance: A Process-Oriented Study of Organizational Control and Executive Involvement," SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Business Administration 2002:15, Stockholm School of Economics.
    11. Robert J. Bennett & Harry Smith & Piero Montebruno & Carry van Lieshout, 2022. "Changes in Victorian entrepreneurship in England and Wales 1851-1911: Methodology and business population estimates," Business History, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 64(7), pages 1211-1243, September.
    12. Wanda J. Orlikowski & C. Suzanne Iacono, 2001. "Research Commentary: Desperately Seeking the “IT” in IT Research—A Call to Theorizing the IT Artifact," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 12(2), pages 121-134, June.
    13. Jody Hoffer Gittell, 2001. "Supervisory Span, Relational Coordination and Flight Departure Performance: A Reassessment of Postbureaucracy Theory," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 12(4), pages 468-483, August.
    14. Dusan Gosnik & Klemen Kavcic, 2021. "Analysis of Selected Aspects of an Organisation: The Organisation as an Instrument, an Interest Group and as a Process," Managing Global Transitions, University of Primorska, Faculty of Management Koper, vol. 19(2 (Summer), pages 167-181.
    15. Brian Gill, 2022. "What Should The Future Of Educational Accountability Look Like?," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 41(4), pages 1232-1239, September.
    16. Elfenbein, Hillary Anger, 2007. "Emotion in Organizations: A Review in Stages," Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, Working Paper Series qt2bn0n9mv, Institute of Industrial Relations, UC Berkeley.
    17. Petrick, Martin, 2017. "Incentive provision to farm workers in post-socialist settings: evidence from East Germany and North Kazakhstan," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 20(2), pages 239-256.
    18. L A Franco & M Meadows, 2007. "Exploring new directions for research in problem structuring methods: on the role of cognitive style," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 58(12), pages 1621-1629, December.
    19. Hervé Crès & Itzhak Gilboa, & Nicolas Vieille, 2012. "Bureaucracy in Quest for Feasibility," Working Papers hal-00973094, HAL.
    20. Marie-Laure Salles-Djelic & Michel Gutsatz, 2000. "Managerial Competencies for Organizational Flexibility: The Luxury Goods Industry between Tradition and Postmodernism," Post-Print hal-01892018, HAL.
    21. Abul Hossain Ahmed Bhuiyan & Aminul Haque Faraizi & Jim McAllister, 2008. "Planning for the deployment of development in Bangladesh," Progress in Development Studies, , vol. 8(3), pages 231-240, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    OR education History of OR;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jomega:v:37:y:2009:i:3:p:615-623. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/375/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.