IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/pal/jorsoc/v56y2005i12d10.1057_palgrave.jors.2601963.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Putting soft OR methods to work: the case of IS strategy development for the UK Parliament

Author

Listed:
  • R Ormerod

    (Warwick University)

Abstract

In 1999 a project was undertaken to develop an information systems strategy (ISS) for the UK Parliament. This was the first time that both Houses of Parliament, the Lords and the Commons, had collaborated in such a venture. The paper describes the attempt to apply soft OR in the project. Because of the inherent interest of the context of the intervention, the paper describes the project in some detail. In the event the formal soft OR methods were not used but a soft approach was taken. The experience complements earlier studies in the retail, mining and electricity supply industries. The paper is the last in a series of published case studies, which describe attempts to apply soft methods in practice. Together the cases articulate the ‘strand of practice’ of one practitioner.

Suggested Citation

  • R Ormerod, 2005. "Putting soft OR methods to work: the case of IS strategy development for the UK Parliament," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 56(12), pages 1379-1398, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:jorsoc:v:56:y:2005:i:12:d:10.1057_palgrave.jors.2601963
    DOI: 10.1057/palgrave.jors.2601963
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1057/palgrave.jors.2601963
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1057/palgrave.jors.2601963?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    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. Ormerod, Richard, 1999. "Putting soft OR methods to work: The case of the business improvement project at PowerGen," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 118(1), pages 1-29, October.
    2. Ormerod, RJ, 1998. "Putting Soft OR Methods to Work: Information Systems Strategy Development at Palabora," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 75-98, February.
    3. Keys, P., 1997. "Approaches to understanding the process of OR: Review, critique and extension," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 1-13, February.
    4. Ormerod, R. J., 1997. "The design of organisational intervention: Choosing the approach," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 25(4), pages 415-435, August.
    5. Richard J. Ormerod, 1996. "Information Systems Strategy Development at Sainsbury's Supermarkets Using “Soft” OR," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 26(1), pages 102-130, February.
    6. Corbett, Charles J. & Overmeer, Willem J. A. M. & Van Wassenhove, Luk N., 1995. "Strands of practice in OR (the practitioner's dilemma)," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 87(3), pages 484-499, December.
    7. Graeme S. Pauley & Richard J. Ormerod, 1998. "The Evolution of a Performance Measurement Project at RTZ," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 28(4), pages 94-118, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. G A Hindle & L A Franco, 2009. "Combining problem structuring methods to conduct applied research: a mixed methods approach to studying fitness-to-drive in the UK," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 60(12), pages 1637-1648, December.
    2. Tom Pape, 2020. "Prioritising data items for business analytics: Framework and application to human resources," Papers 2012.13813, arXiv.org.
    3. Georgiou, Ion, 2012. "Messing about in transformations: Structured systemic planning for systemic solutions to systemic problems," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 223(2), pages 392-406.
    4. Richard Ormerod, 2017. "Writing practitioner case studies to help behavioural OR researchers ground their theories: application of the mangle perspective," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 68(5), pages 507-520, May.
    5. R J Ormerod, 2008. "Evaluating PSMs," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 59(1), pages 137-138, January.
    6. Yearworth, Mike & White, Leroy, 2014. "The non-codified use of problem structuring methods and the need for a generic constitutive definition," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 237(3), pages 932-945.
    7. Ana Gabriela Ramírez-Gutiérrez & Pedro Pablo Cardoso-Castro & Ricardo Tejeida-Padilla, 2021. "A Methodological Proposal for the Complementarity of the SSM and the VSM for the Analysis of Viability in Organizations," Systemic Practice and Action Research, Springer, vol. 34(3), pages 331-357, June.
    8. R J Ormerod, 2008. "Comments on Córdoba and Midgley: the Javeriana case," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 59(5), pages 719-721, May.

    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. R J Ormerod, 2008. "The transformation competence perspective," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 59(11), pages 1435-1448, November.
    2. Keys, Paul, 2000. "Creativity, design and style in MS/OR," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 303-312, June.
    3. Georgiou, Ion, 2012. "Messing about in transformations: Structured systemic planning for systemic solutions to systemic problems," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 223(2), pages 392-406.
    4. Ormerod, Richard, 1999. "Putting soft OR methods to work: The case of the business improvement project at PowerGen," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 118(1), pages 1-29, October.
    5. Sorensen, Lene & Vidal, Rene Victor Valqui & Engstrom, Erik, 2004. "Using soft OR in a small company--The case of Kirby," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 152(3), pages 555-570, February.
    6. R J Ormerod, 2005. "Intellectual and practical journeys," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 56(7), pages 874-876, July.
    7. Morgan, Jennifer Sian & Howick, Susan & Belton, Valerie, 2017. "A toolkit of designs for mixing Discrete Event Simulation and System Dynamics," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 257(3), pages 907-918.
    8. Small, Adrian & Wainwright, David, 2014. "SSM and technology management: Developing multimethodology through practice," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 233(3), pages 660-673.
    9. 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.
    10. Mingers, John & Rosenhead, Jonathan, 2004. "Problem structuring methods in action," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 152(3), pages 530-554, February.
    11. Ormerod, R.J., 2014. "Critical rationalism in practice: Strategies to manage subjectivity in OR investigations," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 235(3), pages 784-797.
    12. Espinosa, Angela & Reficco, Ezequiel & Martínez, Andrea & Guzmán, David, 2015. "A methodology for supporting strategy implementation based on the VSM: A case study in a Latin-American multi-national," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 240(1), pages 202-212.
    13. Frederic H. Murphy, 2005. "ASP, The Art and Science of Practice: Elements of a Theory of the Practice of Operations Research: Expertise in Practice," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 35(4), pages 313-322, August.
    14. Z Zhu, 2011. "After paradim: why mixing-methodology theorising fails and how to make it work again," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 62(4), pages 784-798, April.
    15. Small, Adrian & Wainwright, David, 2018. "Privacy and security of electronic patient records – Tailoring multimethodology to explore the socio-political problems associated with Role Based Access Control systems," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 265(1), pages 344-360.
    16. Preece, Gary & Shaw, Duncan & Hayashi, Haruo, 2015. "Application of the Viable System Model to analyse communications structures: A case study of disaster response in Japan," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 243(1), pages 312-322.
    17. Ranyard, J.C. & Fildes, R. & Hu, Tun-I, 2015. "Reassessing the scope of OR practice: The Influences of Problem Structuring Methods and the Analytics Movement," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 245(1), pages 1-13.
    18. R J Ormerod, 2008. "Comments on Córdoba and Midgley: the Javeriana case," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 59(5), pages 719-721, May.
    19. Franco, L. Alberto & Hämäläinen, Raimo P. & Rouwette, Etiënne A.J.A. & Leppänen, Ilkka, 2021. "Taking stock of behavioural OR: A review of behavioural studies with an intervention focus," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 293(2), pages 401-418.
    20. Graeme S. Pauley & Richard J. Ormerod, 1998. "The Evolution of a Performance Measurement Project at RTZ," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 28(4), pages 94-118, August.

    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:pal:jorsoc:v:56:y:2005:i:12:d:10.1057_palgrave.jors.2601963. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/ .

    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.