On the roles of OR/MS practitioners in supporting strategy

Abstract

This paper presents an exploratory account of how Operational Research/Management Science (OR/MS) practitioners understand their role in supporting an organisational strategy process. The role of strategy support is characterised by five dimensions: the activities supported within the strategy process; the nature of support provided; the orientation of the support provided; the tools used in providing support; and the nature of the relationship between consultant and client. The research draws on case studies of four OR/MS practitioners working as internal and as external consultants. The work of the practitioners is mapped onto the framework and gaps are identified. The research proposes a further dimension, namely, 'the purpose of the support provided', and suggests four purposeful support roles adopted by practitioners in supporting strategy within organisations: sensemaking/sensegiving; decision support tool development; problem solving/solution exploration; and process facilitation. The paper concludes with suggestions for further research.

Behavioural operational research: Returning to the roots of the OR profession

“…Currently, there a number of studies that focus on particular types of actors such as expert or novice modellers (Tako & Robinson, 2010;Tavella & Papadopoulos, 2015;Willemain, 1994Willemain, , 1995Willemain & Powell, 2007), but there is still little work examining how other types of OR actors contribute to shape OR-supported processes, with few exceptions (e.g. O'Brien, 2015;Ormerod, 2014).…”

On technical debt in mathematical programming: An exploratory study

“…On the one hand, SE has extensively applied this methodology to address different aspects of TD, especially when aiming to uncover the developers' perspectives or knowledge about this topic [10,11,28,33,43,57,63]. On the other hand, OR has also used surveys (both quantitative and qualitative) as methodologies on a myriad of topics [1,2,60,67].…”

Knowledge and Strategic Management: Between the Traditional and Contemporary Strategic Approaches

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