1.1 Introduction
In many other disciplines, attention to the study of behavioral issues becomes prominent when their theoretical core has reached maturity. This has happened in economics (Camerer and Lowenstein 2003), finance (Bruce 2010), accounting (Birnberg et al. 2007) and strategic management (Powell et al. 2011), as well as in cognate disciplines such as operations management (Bendoly et al. 2015), decision and Game Theory (Camerer 2003; Von Winterfeldt and Edwards 1986) and environmental modeling (Hämäläinen 2015). The development of the discipline of Operational Research (OR) is similar, and thus the current resurgence of interest in the behavioral perspective (Franco and Hämäläinen 2016) is not surprising. We use the term resurgence deliberately: attention to the non-mathematical and behavioral aspects of the OR profession can be traced back to past debates in the 1960s and 1970s within mainstream OR (e.g. Ackoff 1977; Churchman 1970; Dutton and Walton 1964; Lawrence 1966) and in the 1980s and 1990s within systems thinking (e.g. Senge and Sterman 1992) and in the specialized domain of soft OR (e.g. Jackson et al. 1989). Behavioral issues received less attention in subsequent years. For example, they are hardly mentioned in the 50th anniversary issues of Operational Research (Wein 2002) and the Journal of the Operational Research Society (Brailsford et al. 2009). However, as the OR discipline attends to the improvement of human problem solving and decision making in practice, a return to behavioral concerns within the discipline was in some ways foreseeable. What motivates this renewed attention to behavioral issues in OR is the recognition that developing technically correct and valid models is not enough; we also need to design model-supported interventions by taking into account behavioral factors that could enhance or hinder their effectiveness.
The latest evidence of the revival of what is now known as behavioral OR (Hämäläinen et al. 2013), or BOR for short, can be found in the special issue of the European Journal of Operational Research that focused on BOR (Franco and Hämäläinen 2016). In addition, high levels of participation in BOR streams at international conferences, the creation of a BOR national interest group sponsored by the UK OR Society1 and the launch of a BOR website portal hosted by Aalto University2 are all clear testimony to the closer attention that the OR community is increasingly showing to the behavioral perspective. Noticeable in this return to BOR is a commitment to empirically examine what people actually do within a system or when engaged in OR-supported processes, for not doing so would limit the development of relevant theories that could help advance explanations linking the key behavioral dimensions that shape the conduct of OR in practice. Such behavioral-based explanations would go beyond pure description and have a prescriptive orientation concerned with improving the use of OR in practice (Franco and Hämäläinen 2016), including the responsible and ethical use of OR-supported processes (Le Menestrel and Van Wassenhove 2004, 2009; Ormerod and Ulrich 2013).
Two main streams of work that have generated attention within BOR can be identified. The first stream has a long history within academic OR and concentrates on the use of the OR approach to model human behavior in complex settings. For example, there is long standing tradition of modeling behavior in decision analysis (e.g. French et al. 2009) and System Dynamics (e.g. Sterman 2000). The second stream investigates how behavior affects or is affected by OR model–supported processes in individual, group and organizational contexts. Although still relatively under researched, this stream is receiving increasing attention from both OR academics and practitioners, particularly in Europe (e.g. Ackermann and Eden 2011; Amini et al. 2012; Brailsford and Schmidt 2003; Franco 2013; Hämäläinen et al. 2013; Morton and Fasolo 2009; Ormerod 2014a; Rouwette et al. 2011; White 2009). While different in focus, the two streams share the common goal of designing and deploying OR-supported interventions to improve organizational systems and operations.
Against the above background, we propose in this introductory chapter an agenda for driving the development of BOR as a legitimate sub-discipline within OR, by means of an integrative framework based on the three interdependent concepts of OR methods, OR actors and OR praxis. The framework is intended as an organizing device for the conduct of empirical BOR studies, highlighting different analytical foci and points of entry into the study of behavioral issues in the practice of OR.
The chapter is structured as follows. In the next section we draw on practice theories within the social and organizational sciences to introduce the three central concepts of OR methods, OR actors and OR praxis. Next, we link these three concepts together within an integrative framework intended to organize and guide the conduct of empirical BOR studies. The framework is illustrated with exemplars from the developing BOR literature that increase or challenge our current understandings of OR practice and its impacts. We end the chapter with a discussion of the implications of the behavioral perspective for advancing the OR discipline.
1.2 OR Methods, OR Actors, OR Praxis
In this section we draw upon the practice traditions within the social and organization sciences (Feldman and Orlikowski 2011; Jarzabkowski et al. 2007; Nicolini 2012; Reckwitz 2002; Schatzki et al. 2001; Turner 1994; Whittington 2006) and in particular the work of Richard Whittington within strategy research (e.g. Whittington 2003; Whittington 2006, 2011), with a view to offering an integrative framework that highlights different analytic foci and entry points for the conduct of empirical BOR studies. Three important questions derived from practice theories are particularly relevant to the BOR perspective, and they underpin the central elements in our framework. Specifically, when examining an OR-supported process using a behavioral lens, we need to address the following questions: (i) What guides behavior in the process? (ii) Whose behavior counts in the process? and (iii) How behavior is enacted in the process? Importantly, answers to these questions can explain the impacts that are achieved (or not) from the application of OR. We turn to each of these questions below.
What guides behavior in an OR-supported process are the methods used by those engaged with that process. OR methods provide the resources through which people are able to interact in order to accomplish OR-supported work. At a basic level, then, methods include the range of OR techniques and tools available to support interactions in an OR-supported process. However, our conceptualization of OR methods goes beyond techniques and tools; it also includes standardized routines for building and using models; approaches to communicating with and about models; and norms and procedures for intervention design, data collection, training and teaching and embedding OR-supported processes in organizational routines. These are important but often overlooked aspects of the methods of OR, and they too provide a source of guidance for actual problem solving and decision making interactions.
From a BOR perspective, the role or identity of those participating in an OR-supported process also matters. Here we adopt the general category of actors to refer to those individuals who—acting in isolation or as part of a team—design, implement, or engage with OR-supported processes. Thus, OR actors include not just mainstream OR practitioners (e.g. modellers, analysts, facilitators, consultants) who are at the center of any OR-supported work but also others who participate in OR-related activity as clients, sponsors, experts or simply users. All these can be seen as OR actors whose behavior is critical to the success or failure of OR-supported processes. Indeed, actors’ behaviors matter because their effects and those of the OR methods used are intertwined in practice.
How behavior is enacted in an OR-supported process is also important from a BOR perspective, because it has to do with what OR actors actually do with OR methods in situ. We adopt the term praxis to conceptualize this process, namely, all the various streams of actual OR activity carried out by OR actors. Although actual OR praxis involves dynamic flows of activity taking place at different organizational levels (Mitchell 1993), behavioral aspects of OR praxis are most visible within specific episodes (cf. Luhmann 1995) of OR-related activity, such as modeling sessions, meetings, presentations and workshops of varying duration, frequency and sequence. Examining actual behavior in OR praxis has the bene...