Housing in the Dearne Valley: Doing Community OR with the Thurnscoe Tenants Housing Co-Operative Part 1 — The Involvement of the Community OR Unit

Thunhurst, Colin; Ritchie, Charles; Friend, John; Booker, Pauline

doi:10.1057/jors.1992.15

Cited by 12 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…(The work of the Community OR Unit is reported regularly in its newsletter, ACORN.) In the area of housing, the Unit is engaged in a number of projects, the longest standing of which is its work with a tenants housing co-operative located in South Yorkshire [34,35].…”

Section: Journal Of Management In Medicine 64 62mentioning

confidence: 99%

Operational Research: A Role in Strengthening Community Participation?

Thunhurst

1992

Journal of Management in Medicine

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Operational Research -An Old Wine in New Bottles?Operational research is an academic and professional discipline that cut its teeth (and owes its name) to the analysis of operational problems encountered in the military sector during the Second World War. It grew to maturity by taking approaches and techniques developed within this context and applying them to logistical problems within the public and private industrial, and then business and commercial, sectors. More recently, the application of operational research has been advocated for the solution of all manner of tactical and, more frequently, strategic problems in the public service sector.Despite the frequency with which its application is now advocated, the precise meaning of "operational research" remains to most more than a little elusive. Within the UK, the discipline's professional body, the Operational Research Society, for many years carried a definition of operational research on the inside front cover of its then quarterly journal. This definition ran as follows:Operational Research is the application of the methods of science to complex problems arising in the direction and management of large systems of men, machines, materials and money in industry, business, government and defence. The distinctive approach is to develop a scientific model of the system, incorporating measurement of factors such as chance and risk, with which to predict and compare the outcomes of alternative decisions, strategies or controls. The purpose is to help management determine its policy and actions scientifically.

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Section: Journal Of Management In Medicine 64 62mentioning

confidence: 99%

Operational Research: A Role in Strengthening Community Participation?

Thunhurst

1992

Journal of Management in Medicine

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“…The South Australian Southern Community Health Research Unit [12], for example, in their excellent manual Planning Healthy Communities -A Guide to doing Community Needs Assessment demonstrate use of the focus group, the nominal group technique and the Delphi technique. Within the UK, the Community Operational Research Unit has been using similar techniques as they help to articulate and realize the needs of community housing groups [13], and, to a lesser degree, has conducted some preliminary work with community health groups [14].…”

Section: A Richer More Informed Policy Dialoguementioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond the Annual Report

Thunhurst

1992

Journal of Management in Medicine

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Reflects on three years′ experience of Annual Reports on the Public Health. Argues that the material benefits do not warrant an overly substantial amount of dedicated time – a five‐year strategic public health programme, supported by a periodic cross‐sectional analysis, is more appropriate and would exploit much wider sources of data than those generally appearing in Annual Reports, Considers the value of the Decennial Census of Population, as a data source. Suggests that it must be used in conjunction with other sources of “hard” data. Also argues that methods for collecting and incorporating qualitative data must be developed, together with a framework for informed policy analysis, which would facilitate a participative dialogue compatible with the aims of the “new” public health.

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“…Pioneering work can be seen from Ackoff's work with leaders in the black community in Mantua, USA (Ackoff, 1970), Cook's work in Aston, Birmingham, UK (Cook, 1984), Eden et al's work with charities (Jones & Eden, 1981), and Beer's work with the Allende government of Chile (Beer, 1974). After an explosion of interest, a number of clusters of applications have sprung up (Jones & Eden, 1981), including work in housing (Johnson, 2007(Johnson, , 2012Midgley, Munlo, & Brown, 1998;Rosenhead & White, 1996;Thunhurst, Ritchie, Friend, & Booker, 1992), health (White, 1999(White, , 2003, poverty , and sustainability (Waltner-Toews, Neudoerffer, Joshi, & Tamang, 2005). It seems that the extant literature on Community OR involves the application of methods in an enhanced way to problems in which interests of underrepresented or vulnerable populations in communities are the main concern, and for which solutions to these problems are difficult (Midgley & Ochoa-Arias, 1999).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%