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Custom and Practice

Author(s): Jonathan RosenheadReviewed work(s):Source: The Journal of the Operational Research Society, Vol. 37, No. 4 (Apr., 1986), pp. 335-343Published by: Palgrave Macmillan Journals on behalf of the Operational Research SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2582561 .

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J. OpI Res. Soc. Vol. 37, No. 4, pp. 335-343, 1986 0160-5682/86 3.00+ 0.00Printedn GreatBritain.All rightsreserved Copyright 1986OperationalResearchSocietyLtd

Custom and PracticeJONATHAN ROSENHEADInaugural Address as President of the Operational Research Society, Society for Long-Range Planning,London, 15th January 1986

I stand here today as a result of a long series of accidents, mistakes and misjudgements. Not allof them have been mine. However, this is not the occasion for recriminations, and I, for one, planto make the most of what is still to come.Nevertheless, I will try not to be bland. Nobody, I am sure, thinks that I was elected Presidentto be statesperson-like. Other people can do that better. So I will do my best to be forthright andin case anyone should feel provoked, I have waived my right to a respectful post-Address silence.Please feel free to start an argument immediately with luck it could last at least two years.It is customary for those who have been elected to any post to claim a mandate for theirproposedchanges (though this is harder for those elected unopposed). Naturally I do so too the more sosince I came out ahead of not one but two competitors for the post of President. However, whenI have rehearsed this claim during my year as President Elect, a surprising number of people haverevealed themselves as hyper-democrats. "Split votes", they have murmured, or "minority rule".To which one response might be to point out that on this argument, the current Prime Minister'sauthority would be highly suspect. On reflection, however, I prefer to take a less exposed position,namely that my mandate is, at any rate, better than anyone else's.You will notice that I have already broken one of the great Unwritten Rules, which is "Keeppolitics out of operational research". (The other rules are "Keep politics out of sport", and"Don't bring religion into politics".) I intend to continue the trespass during the rest of thisAddress. Not because I wish to shock, but because it can't be helped. Politics is already there withinO.R., and only a limited number of worthwhile statements about the practice and the future ofoperational research can be made without touching on the political domain. Indeed, to talk, writeand act as if there were no politics in operational research is itself a distinctly political posture.These statements must stand for the moment as assertions. The justification will be provided inwhat follows.The subject of this Address, Custom and Practice, covers the questions of who O.R. works for('custom'), as well as what we do and how we do it ('practice'). These were, by and large, the issuesraised in the statement with which I offered myself for election. Since this must be the basis formy claim to a mandate, it may be helpful to quote a key section of it here. Thus: "If elected, Iwould regard this as a mandate for initiatives to find a more significant social role for operationalresearch. We need to expand the range of O.R.'s clients it is not only business, military andgovernment who have problems of decision-making under uncertainty. We need to make theSociety more of a forum for the profession to question its assumptions and methodology, whichcurrently exclude it from the larger and messier problems". This passage alludes to the threetopics I wish to discuss here, namely who O.R.'s 'customers' are, how we go about helpingthem, and with what sort of problems. I will take them in sequence, though in reality the threeissues are intermeshed. I should also stress that the thoughts expressed here are preliminary andprovisional. Any defects I intend to blame on the general paucity and poverty of O.R. discussionon these issues.

O.R's CUSTOMERSThere really is no appropriate generic word to describe the people or groups who giveoperational researchers work to do. Any particular word presupposes a particular form ofrelationship. So 'customer' implies a principally financial relation of buying and selling a service;'client' appears to arrogate to O.R. a role of custodian of professional expertise which the client

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Journal of the Operational Research Society Vol. 37, No. 4has neither knowledge nor resources to question; 'patron' conveys the notion of patricianunconcern for the products of operational research; while 'sponsor' suggests someone whosefunction is only to introduce O.R. to its area of opportunity. Traces of each of these roles canindeed be found, but none of them, either separately or together, is entirely adequate. For theyall omit the essential element of mutual interaction in the actual process of problem elucidationor decision-making. If in what follows I use the words 'client' and 'customer', it is for simplicity,and because (however regrettably) these aspects are perhaps the dominant ones in current O.R.practice.Who are O.R.'s customers? Almost exclusively they have been the managements of formallyestablished and legally entrenched organizations disposing of substantial resources (capital,equipment, buildings, supplies), including the labour power of their employees. Or, as the O.R.Society definition puts it, "large systems of men, machines, materials and money". This comesdown to big business, public utilities, the military and central government departments, with a thinscatter of local governments and health and other public authorities.Isn't that everybody? Well, it certainly isn't "all human life", as one of our Sunday papers usedto pride itself on presenting. What many people think is most important about being alive seemsto disappear down the cracks between these mega-organizations. It isn't only sex and love whichhave no place in the objectives and formal operations of these organizations. Excluded also arecomradeship, the satisfaction of skill, warm human relations, caring for one another. Since theseconsiderations are not on the organizational agenda, they are not among the concerns addressedby operational research studies.Perhaps this seems rather far-fetched. Who would want operational research trampling aroundin delicate areas like that, and spoiling them? But of course we do trample around in these areas,because human life doesn't stop short outside the factory gate, or wait on the other side of theoffice security door because it hasn't been issued with the right plastic card. It is simply that thesereal human interests are not represented among the concerns of the management of theseorganizations, so that operational research's impact on them is accidental and unconsidered. Worsestill, it can be argued (although I will not do so in detail here) that the pursuit of what are theconcerns of management all too often conflicts with the maintenance and enhancement of theseessential human qualities. This means that the life-denying characteristics of much operationalresearch activity are not accidental but systematic.To be concrete, consider the case of health. We have organizations concerned with the care ofthe sick, and some operational researchers work for them. Many people care about health- andhealth care-certainly the sick and their families, a fair number of doctors, probably a highproportion of nurses. But operational research works for the management of the organizationswhich deliver health care. The result is that the concerns which it predominantly addresses are notto do with health or sickness as such, but with the productivity of health service resources, or simplywith how to save money. Yet strategies for cost reduction or for throughput increases are of theirnature likely to have negative consequences for the quality (as distinct from the quantity) of care,and to do violence to relationships between patient and nurse, between nurse and nurse, betweenpatient and family.This is not to say that health service managers are heartless villains, or dessicated calculatingmachines. Indeed, some of my best friends are health service managers! On the average, theircommitment to the improvement of health is, I believe, not inferior, say, to that of medicalpractitioners. There is no point in blaming them, nor indeed the often dedicated O.R. workers inthe health field. They are constrained not by their own intentions, but by the organizational rolewhich is available to them.

How could it be different?An effort of imagination is required, for operational research cannotbe conceived in isolation from an organizational customer. How, for example, can O.R. have aninput to preventative (as opposed to curative) health care in the virtual absence of relevantagencies? But some alternative organizations do exist. There is the Patients Association, forexample, which aims to provide a collective voice for patients, independent of government, thehealth professions and the drug companies, and to protect the interests of patients generally. Thereare Community Health Councils, with limited statutory rights, but considerable legitimacy torepresent their local populations on health issues. Some local authorities are taking such initiatives336


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J. Rosenhead Custom and Practiceas the formation of health strategy groups and commissions on food and nutrition. These are allbodies which try to look after the interests of those with actual or potential health needs. In areasother than health, we can also find groups located outside the power structure. Half a generationago, Steve Cook listed consumer groups, political parties, charities, residents associations ... asamong potential sponsors of O.R. Operational research for them is still notable for its almostcomplete absence.There are a number of good reasons for this selectivity of O.R. activity. (There are also somebad ones.) Principal among them is that these organizations do not dispose of enough resourcesto employ operational research, or enough political clout to achieve implementation of anyrecommendations. Rather than tackle this argument head on though I believe it to be essentiallycyclical let us turn instead to another area where it certainly won't hold water: the trade unions.The trade unions have large resources (though orders of magnitude less than those of employingorganizations). They represent certain interests of their members which are generally inimical tothose represented by management. (These concerns of trade unions are not limited to wagebargaining, but also embrace skill content, the working environment and work hazards.) They haveat various times achieved very considerable effectiveness in pursuing some of those interests, to theextent that they have been represented as holding the nation to ransom. Why has almost no O.R.been done for unions? The National Coal Board Operational Research Executive is one of thelargest and most sophisticated units in Britain. Where is the National Union of Mineworkers' O.R.group?As is well known, it takes two to tango. O.R. workers have not as yet been deluged with requestsfrom the labour movement for their technical services. But, then, neither were the evangelizingproponents of O.R. who, in the 1940s and 1950s, had to persuade a sceptical managementthat therewere problems for which they could be useful. The identification of trade union problems whichO.R. could help with, services which O.R. could provide, will necessarily be a mutual one. Theprocess of mutuality is unlikely to start without initiatives from O.R. practitioners. Indeed it willrequire entrepreneurship, and a willingness to take intellectual and career risks.O.R.'s neglect of a very substantial clientele is not, of course, simply an oversight. One cansuspect that there is a fear of upsetting our more powerful and established clientele, the managers.But economists, accountants, lawyers and others work for trade unions without apparentlybringing all their colleagues down in penury. Perhaps part of the reason for the selectivity is apositive alignment by many O.R. workers, especially the more senior ones, with the interests ofmanagement and those of capital in opposition to those of the organized work force.Whatever the reason, it is undoubtedly a very sensitive area. This was borne in on me withsalutary force when I organized a stream of papers at an Operational Research Society AnnualConference in the late 1970s. The speakers eventually included two trade unionists notunreasonably, as the theme of the stream was 'participation'. But as the shape of my stream beganto emerge, I was taken on one side by the chairperson of the programme committee, who urgedon me, with some persistence, the importance of 'balance'. There were, in fact, other disreputableindividuals on my speakers list for example, an academic sociologist. But there was also aprofessor of computing. There was a representative of community groups campaigning over theredevelopment of London's Docklands, but paired with a local government urban planner workingon that development project. And there was one industrial manager, and two industrial O.R.workers reporting on projects carried out for management.Why did this assemblage threaten 'balance'?I slowly came to see that the inclusion of any speakerof a radical political perspective, any trade union representative was a threat to the stability of abalance, which had presumably been locked in one extreme position for so long that its right panhad stuck to the table. For this 'balance' had not been threatened by the total exclusion of tradeunion or other grass-roots viewpoints from the other four conference streams or indeed by theirvirtual absence from the 18 preceding conferences.This pro-management emphasis within O.R. practice and culture is by no means its onlybias. Again, let me- llustrate with an anecdote. Some years ago, I wrote a paper on ways of helpingmy then 14-year-old step-daughter on the educational subject choices which confronted her. Thepaper was accepted for publication in a pre-eminent operational research journal; but whenthe proofs arrived from the printers, I found that 'she' had everywhere been replaced by 'he'.

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Journal of the Operational Research Society Vol. 37, No. 4Enquiry revealed that this was not the aberration of some dazed proof-reader. It was a deliberateact by the editor, in compliance with the house style, which required all decision-makers to bemale. Reality did eventually reassert itself, and I could once more refer to Sarah as 'she' butonly by agreeing to the insertion of a footnote explaining that very similar methods would workfor a boy.It would be reassuring to laugh off this incident as amusing, harmless and atypical, and certainlynot reflecting any institutionalized sexism. If I were to take this line, I hope I would be supportedin it by all the O.R. Society's previous Presidents by Roy and Brian, by George and Mike andAlec, by Rolfe and Keith and Stafford and Bill, by Roger and George and Pat and John andMaurice, and by William and Owen. Perhaps I should clarify that Pat is short for Patrick.Behind the details of such stories, however, lies the reality that O.R. practice, like any otherorganized social activity, operates with a range of often unarticulated assumptions. So far I haveonly been concerned with the assumptions which are made about feasible clients, though I willcome to some of the other assumptions shortly. What it is worth stressing at this point is that theseassumptions do not drop from the sky. They did not just happen, so, like it or not, they cannotsimply be unthought. To point out the peculiar limitations which O.R., largely unthinkingly,accepts is not to say that we could make it different just by wanting to. But awareness of thepartiality of our practice is at least a necessary first step in motivating us to look for viablealternatives.

O.R.'s METHODSThe next step, perhaps, is to consider whether, if operational researchers were to work with andfor other sorts of organizations, we would know how to help. O.R.'s customers have been drawnfrom a narrow, though powerful, segment of society. Are the methods and tools we have developedappropriate for other possible clients? A decade and a half ago, Russ Ackoff held that they were

not. "The methods, techniques and tools of problem solving that have been developed in theManagement Sciences", he wrote, "apply primarily to what might be called 'uninodal homo-geneous organizations"' by which he meant a pyramidal organization with a hierarchialstructure, which has greater control of its members than its members have over it. This, of course,is an accurate description of just those types of organizations for and in which O.R. has principallybeen developed.The evolved forms of tools reflect the circumstances of their use. The shape and structure of anaxe, for example, take account of the physiology of the wielder, the physics of the object to besplit, and the technology of axe manufacture. This interdependence of tool and environment ischaracteristic of all significant technologies. Encapsulated in any technology, if we have the mind,we can discover a frozen picture of the economics, property and working relations, balance offorces between interest groups indeed, of the entire mode of production which attended itsinception and development. Try this out in the case of the motor car, for example. Or for thosewith a more historical bent, consider the ousting of the spinning jenny by the self-acting mule inearly 19th century cotton manufacture.Operational research is committed, not to the unravelling of knowledge about the universe, butto practical impact on the functioning of organized human activities. Evidently, then, it is bestconsidered as a technology rather than as a science. So we should not be surprised that theparticular circumstances of O.R.'s employment have shaped the forms of its tools, and in so doinghave limited the scope of their use. Yet many O.R. people do resist this perception, asserting forour subject both timelessness and universality claims which are dubious even for science, butpreposterous for technology.What, for O.R., are the shaping features in the dynamics of the organizations for which O.R.has worked?We can identify them from my earlier Ackoff quotation. A homogeneous organizationis one with a concern to control those who live or work within it. A uninodal organization is onewith a high degree of centralization. Taking the analysis one step further, we can follow Weberin observing that the bureaucratic organization (for that is what we are describing) is concernedto dehumanize working relations, to reduce, though it cannot eliminate, the scope for discretionor judgement. We can call this a tendency towards deskilling.

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J. Rosenhead Custom and PracticeThese three features deskilling, centralization, control are certainly not independent of eachother, nor are they autonomous, disembodied urges. They have joint roots in the form of economicorganization of our society. But this is not the place for such a discussion. The purpose of pointingout these aspects of corporate dynamics is rather to highlight how well they are mirrored by both

the tools and the methods of O.R., indeed by its 'problematique'. Deskilling, for example, can beseen as implicit both in the entire project of replacing judgement by quantification, and moredirectly in the thrust to extend the range of decisions which, in Simon's term, are 'programmable'.Operational research here follows the imperative enunciated by Henry Ford to concentratethinking in the "mental power-plant".So deskilling implies a centralization both of information and of conceptual work. Centralizationis evident too in O.R.'s commitment to 'the problem' and 'the solution' (as if there were only oneof each), and to discovery of the decision-maker whose organizational fiefdom extends over therelevant variables. Virtuous optimization (with its complementary sin of suboptimization) impliesin this densely connected world a holistic approach which seeks to enlarge the boundaries of thatproblem to the maximum. Indeed, if there is no decision-maker with the requisite authority, weare liable to demand that one be invented.The requirement for an authoritative decision-maker rests on his (or her) ability to implementO.R. recommendations, that is to control the processes and people who make up his (or her)segment of the organization. 'Control' features extensively in O.R.'s vocabulary productioncontrol, stock control, financial control. Indeed, it can be argued that those optimizing techniqueswhich predominate in our tool-kit themselves carry a control implication. For does not the conceptof target, of optimal point of aim, imply also a mechanism for achieving it? If there is just onebest way (and we experts have found it), it would be foolish not to restrain deviations from it.These are generalizations, to which there are, of course, exceptions in O.R. practice. The gloomis not impenetrable. Indeed, there are multiple sources of fitful illumination. But in so far asoperational research operates with a dominant problematique, it is of the variety-reducing andauthoritarian character sketched in above. Furthermore, this character is not such as to appeal tooperational research'sneglected alternative clientele. The unholy trinity of deskilling, centralizationand control could scarcely be attractive to grass roots organizations trying to improve theirmembers' leverage over their own lives.Is that an impossible dream? Perhaps the world is now so complex and interconnected- hat, inany case, the techniques and methods required to take coherent and purposeful decisions arenecessarily beyond the comprehension of most people. If so, participation is a futile and utopiandream and so is meaningful democracy. Certainly, if the allocation of social resources requiresthe deployment of mixed-integer linear programming, the woman on the Clapham omnibus willnot quite see how to get involved.

But the Byzantine incomprehensibility of much of O.R.'s accumulation of technique is in goodmeasure our own fault or at least the consequence of our adopted problematique. For both theelimination of skill and judgement and the centralization of decision contribute massively to thecomplexity of the problems to which O.R.'s techniques purport to find solutions. Put another way,if we posit initially a decision process rudimentary in its simplicity, the techniques which feed intothat process must be grotesquely complexified. If, however, we were to accept and indeed welcomea more lively, complex and elaborate social process of decision-making, then the technicalcontributions to it could be correspondingly simpler. The aim need not be, effectively, to replacejudgement by analysis wherever possible. There is an alternative aspiration to assist judgementby analysis whenever necessary.Such a revised posture, and the simpler analytic methods which it would make possible, is aprerequisite if O.R. is to provide useful services for its potential alternative clientele. There is noneed here to overstress the sophistication of management. But they are relatively more able, byvirtue of education, experience and culture, to digest and manipulate abstract or quantifiedargument than are those whose lives, not infrequently, are oppressed by the organizations for whichO.R. currently works.O.R's methodology, then, will need to be far more transparent. It will also need to change inother respects, because the problems confronting O.R's alternative clientele are different in kind.One major distinction is in these organizations' lack of even the semblance of unilateral power.

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Journal of the Operational Research Society Vol. 37, No. 4The principal factors through which the problem situations confronting them will be either resolvedor intensified are typically outside their direct control. Indeed, these factors may well be under thecontrol of one or more of O.R.'s current clients. The analysis of strategies in a conflict situationis more likely than are resource allocation methods to be helpful, when the main resource allocationwill in fact be conducted in somebody else's interests.The alternative client, disposing of few tangible resources, has in general developed no extendedinternal managerial hierarchy. Furthermore, there is in many cases an ideological commitment todemocratic procedures, with ultimate power clearly located at the base. So methods which assumethe existence of abstract objectives for the entire group (to be provided by its leader), or whichby high technicality exclude all except at most a tiny cell of internal 'experts', are non-starters.Often the group will have diverse interests within it, which cannot even in principle be resolvedby appeal to the 'corporate interest', handily embodied in the chief executive. So any methods mustfacilitate the resolution of internal conflict by discussion and debate, as well as the clarification ofexternal conflict. Given the relative weakness of this alternative clientele, the group will often beable to further its aims only through forming coalitions with others; the result is a furtherexpansion of the range of world views and interests which must be accommodated by any viablemethod. Lastly, the group will itself in many cases be ill-defined. What its members want, evenwho its members are, may be unclear initially, or may shift over time. One factor in such changescan be the judgement/analysis process itself, as participants begin to perceive both the limits andthe fuller extent of what they can hope to achieve. So analysis will be an iterative, indeed adevelopmental process. The definition of what exactly 'the problem' is may well not be articulateduntil the end of this process (if there is one).Evidently O.R.'s alternative clientele is beset by 'wicked' problems, whereas O.R.'s forte has beenin the solution of 'tame', well-formulated problems. In the words of Rittel and Webber, "themethods of Operations Research... become operational, however, only after the most importantdecisions have already been made, i.e. after the [wicked] problem has already been tamed".

Evidently also, then, operational research needs an alternative methodology and tool-bag if itis to be effective in helping its potential alternative clients with their problems. The methods whichput a person on the moon, for example, are less than helpful in resolving the problems of Britain'scrumbling inner-city ghettos. What would such an alternative methodology and set of tools be like?We may get some useful ideas towards answering this question by simply taking the dominantcharacteristics of O.R.'s current practice, and standing them on their heads. Instead of deskilling/centralization/control, could we have a methodology founded on reskilling/decentralization/liberation?What would this mean? 'Deskilling' is a process by which craft elements of people's mental ormanual work are removed from their control. Tasks in which they formerly exercised a measureof discretion are performed instead by automatic machinery or by a computer. What is left behindmay be those aspects of work as yet too complex for automation or programming in which case,the worker is expected to perform these 'creative' tasks at a greatly accelerated rate. Or the workleft over may consist of almost accidental task fragments which cannot at present be accommo-dated economically in the automatic sequence. The human machine is assigned these residualoperations for repetitive, monotonous and meaningless execution.'Reskilling' is not merely resistance to this process. After all, much of the labour which isremoved by automation is also wearisome and repetitive, and the social or personal value of mentaljuggling which can be done more effectively by computer is at least questionable. Reskilling ratheris a process which seeks to remove wearisome repetition while preserving or enhancing discretion.This can be achieved by providing material and information in such a way that workers,individually or collectively, are able to exercise more complex control over their own work. The'surplus'time which automation or programming makes available need not be exploited to intensifythe rate of work of a declining labour force. It can be employed instead to enable those who dothe work to gain and exercise new and more sophisticated skills in the management of their ownlabour process.This argument has been expressed in terms of the work which people do for paid employment.But it applies equally to the operations of voluntary and vocational organizations. Reskilling hereconcerns the ability of members to formulate and pursue more effective strategies (but without

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J. Rosenhead Custom and Practiceundermining the collective cohesion which is their strength). Under conditions of complexity anduncertainty this can only be achieved by the availability of relevant information and of appropriatemethods for structuring it. Indeed, reskilling at work and outside are mutually supportive: first,because those who have learned that there is no need for decisions to be taken for them and overthem in one aspect of their lives are less likely to accept it in others; and second, because themethods of information structuring will have common features, enabling them to be 'borrowed'across the factory or office wall.Evidently, then, the concept of reskilling implies major revisions in the ways in which peoplework together. Indeed, the differences are so significant that the notion of 'decentralization' isscarcely an adequate description. Decentralization carries with it the idea of a central authoritywhich is devolved to the periphery, typically so as to achieve greater responsiveness or improvedefficiency. But such voluntary dispersal of powers can as easily be revoked-their local exercise isprovisional, by kind permission, and only for so long as they are employed in a manner consistentwith central objectives.By contrast, reskilling implies a relocation of authority. Those who were previously the objectsof control or of study are now the subjects also. That is, they achieve greater power over their ownoperations. If taken to its logical conclusion, the result would be the abolition of management aswe know it (a force imposed on the members of an organization), or rather its subsumption intothe process of self-management.Of course there is no need as yet to rush shouting to the defence of a management hierarchyin peril of their jobs. These are, after all, only ideas. The practice in our major social institutionsis indeed all the other way. What has been attempted here is a description of an alternative model,of how life might be organized if work satisfaction were regarded as an overriding principle, ratherthan one of behavioural manipulation. In work organizations (and many others), this mode ofoperation is largely driven out into oppositional counter-systems, where its scope and resourcesare extremely limited. The process of extending the regime of self-management, of narrowing theboundaries within which people are controlled to pursue interests not their own, can legitimatelybe described as liberation.I have posed reskilling, decentralization and liberation as characteristics of a possible alternativeO.R. practice, with its own distinctive methods and tools. If it could exist, it would strengthen theeffectiveness of the embryonic counter-systems, and extend their power to wrest more control overthe social and work processes they are contesting. In this way, the possession of appropriate toolsexpands their own scope of application, by augmenting the power of those who wield them.Counter-organizations which currently linger on the margins would need to be acknowledged.Those which are already recognized would need to be reckoned with. It is not that such toolspossess power of their own it is that they can realize the potential power which already exists buthas been rendered ineffective through disorganization, non-coordination or lack of consciousness.But could such tools and methods exist? The answer is not only that they could exist, but thatthey do exist and Britishoperational research, broadly defined, has played a disproportionate roleis developing them. They are the 'softer' approaches, some of which have been discussed at recentconferences on 'Systems and O.R.' they include strategic choice (and AIDA), soft systemsmethodology, cognitive mapping, hypergames and analysis of options. There have been relateddevelopments in France, and in the United States. None of them is a panacea. Each looks at onetype of problem, or certain aspects of problems. None is, I would suggest, a pure form of thealternative methodology, for all have developed and needed to survive within a hostile environ-ment. What exists is the result of a combination of unnatural selection, and of defensive adaptation.Nevertheless, as a corpus, they indicate the transparent, conflict-accepting, structuring potential ofalternative O.R.These formalized alternative O.R. methods have not, of course, sprung up through working onthe problems of any alternative clientele. They, as we have seen, have remained largely un-encumbered by analytic help. No, the elements of an alternative methodology, more appropriatefor working with -'multi-nodal,heterogeneous organizations', have been developed working withand for operational research's regular customers.What am I saying? Have I not, in one medium-length sentence almost devoid of subordinateclauses, undermined my whole case? The answer is 'No', or I would not-have composed it. I have

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Journal of the Operational Research Society Vol. 37, No. 4described the tendency towards deskilling, centralization and control which pervades convention-ally structured organizations, and which is faithfully mirrored in O.R.'s conventional tools andmethods. But the pervasion is not uniform. It is intense at 'shop-floor' level, and indeed at front-lineand middle-management levels-for the problem of controlling the workers is only marginallymore intractable than that of controlling the controllers. At higher levels, where more strategicquestions must be decided, the neat bureaucratic lines of command break down. It is necessaryto assess information from both quantitative and non-quantitative sources, provided out of a rangeof expertises resistant to hierarchicalordering. And the issues which are thrown up will be debatedand reshaped from a variety of differentperspectives, which contend to explain what is happeningand to guide action. It is necessary to pay especial attention to the threats and opportunities posedby uncontrollable elements; the situation must be thought through from the perspectives of theseexternal agencies, so as to assess the scope for collaborative or conflictual activity.In other words there are considerable similarities between strategic decision-making in con-ventional organizations, and the predicament of O.R.'s potential alternative clientele. Bothconfront essentially 'wicked' problems. This is not to say that the problems are the same and thereis all the difference in the world between the abilities of the resource-rich and of the resource-poorto influence the outcome. But there is nevertheless a fair degree of congruence between the methodswhich can be helpful in the resolution of problems in the two milieux which produces the paradoxthat working extensively with our potential alternative clientele may improve O.R.'s ability to assisteffectively in the board room; or alternatively, that tools initially developed to assist in managingprivate corporations or state activities within a capitalist system may be of prime value to groupswhich contest essential elements of that system.The paradox can, I believe, be explained in terms of operational research's role as amarket-substitution mechanism. Markets which once provided coordination between multiplesmall producers have now been internalized within giant organizations and O.R. is one of theways in which that coordination is now achieved. There is therefore nothing inherently capitalistabout O.R., despite the market/control bias of the dominant methodology which it has actuallyaccreted. Indeed, it could be argued that O.R. prefiguresa planning mechanism for a society whoseimpetus does not come from the dynamic of capital accumulation. But that would take us too farfor today.

O.R.'s PROBLEMSI have talked about O.R.'s customers, and its methods. It remains to discuss, briefly, its untackledproblems. Here I do not wish to recite a litany of specific issues, tractable to O.R.-like analysis,which confront trade union branches, community health councils, tenants associations and thelike. For one thing, the work has not been done. We don't know what O.R. could do, becauseneither tango partner has lined up with the other to face the music.So I would rather suggest a different dimension which is missing in O.R., a lack which I thinkwe can all see from our observation of current affairs. The world we observe is beset byoverwhelming predicaments which have a systemic aspect in which any non-catastrophicresolution must thread its way through a maze of complexity, uncertainty and conflicting interests.Those of use who attended the 1985 Operational Research Society Annual Conference will haveheard Dr David Jenkins, Bishop of Durham, quote from a list of "continuous critical problems"compiled 18 years ago, but sadly topical as ever. Yet a significant O.R. contribution is significantby its absence. Heiner Mifller-Merbach identified the gap last year: "There is a huge variety ofproblems waiting for feasible solutions to which the operational research community can

contribute. Today's world is not only shaken by several regional and civil wars, by theconfrontation between the West and the East, by the North-South conflict, and by financialbreakdowns, unemployment, over-population, hunger, crime, lack of education, weakness ofleadership, etc. It is also shaken by strong waves of technological development. To keep the worldand its parts-at the national and regional levels as well as at the level of the enterprise-undercontrol requires advice from many experts. What will the contribution of the operational researchcommunity be?" One can applaud the perception, while regretting perhaps the intrusion, yet again,of O.R's obsession with 'control'.342


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J. Rosenhead Custom and PracticeIf anything, Milier-Merbach understates the urgency of our circumstances. The 1980s find theworld's social and economic systems in crisis, indeed in a turmoil probably more intense than thatof the 1930s. The situation cries out for purposeful contributions from all those who claim andbelieve that they have something to offer in the resolution of complex problems. It will not be aproud boast for turn-of-the-century operational research to look back and say that we survivedthe crisis, but washed our hands of any responsibility for it.Certainly such a record would be out of keeping with the spirit of those who pioneeredoperational research during the Second World War. For, disproportionately, the leading figuresof wartime O.R. were drawn from the radical science movement of the 1930s. Its guiding principle,enunciated most powerfully by Desmond Bernal (himself prominent in the development of O.R.),was that science should be used, not for profit or sectional interests, but for the benefit of the wholecommunity. Blackett, Gordon and Waddington, among many others, were members of thatmovement, and its influence extended, for example, to Watson-Watt and Zuckerman. And theirconcern for the 'social relations of science' did not have its roots in intellectual theory. It sprang,rather, from despair and disgust at the spectacle of human and social waste which surrounded them,

and from a vision that other social arrangements were possible and worth fighting for.To engage with the pressing social issues of our day, the first requirement is a commitment, bothindividual and collective. That would be a big step. But then, would O.R. actually have anacceptable contribution to make? I believe that the factors which I have been discussing, of whooperational research works for and how it works, would, if not severely modified, largely excludeO.R. from involvement. Conversely, the commitment to an alternative mode of operation couldhelp O.R. to realize its potential contribution.Why does O.R. at present effectively exclude itself from contributing to the resolution of majorsocial problems? The reasons lie in both our custom and our practice. The practice is one suitedto dealing with tame problems, whose formulation can be specified at the outset, as the preludeto a technical search for solutions. But major social problems are only resolved through complexsocial processes-of coalition formation, of consensus building, of debate, of mobilization. Ourdominant methodology is impermeable to participation, and uncongenial to negotiation anddebate.The confined range of our clientele is a further handicap. For the dominant custom ofoperational research today, with its overwhelming managerialist emphasis, confers on O.R. theimage of science only for the bosses, of consistently succouring the already powerful. By suchone-sidedness we have gone far towards disqualifying ourselves from a facilitating role where theparticipation and trust of other interests is a key to any resolution.If this diagnosis is accurate, then the prognosis for O.R.'s involvement in major social issues isby no means discouraging. For the cure lies largely in our own hands. A commitment to workingwith and for non-managerial groups could dispel the notion that operational researchis necessarilywedded to a single social interest and perspective. And working with such non-traditional clientscould only strengthen and enrich our incipient alternative O.R. methodology which, through itsopenness to participation and its project of structuringissues rather than solving problems, wouldlend itself more readily to the role of constructively focusing public debate.To aspire to work with such alternative groups, to tackle significant social issues, is not just O.R.empire building. In conditions of complexity and uncertainty, the absence of the tools, the methods,the approach which operational researchcan bring partially disables weaker groups from pursuingtheir aims effectively, and impoverishes the quality of political debate. Certainly O.R. does standto gain, not least through recovering its intellectual vitality. In this sense, we need the involvementwith alternative clients, and with major social problems. But we should always rememberthat theyneed us too.

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