Chapter 1 Research Methodology
The research methodology of the dissertation consists of the literature search, the content organisation and the literature review. First, the literature search aims to accumulate the literature review from other scholars and the literature falling within the remit of BOR including the areas of OR that leads to the studies of BOR. Then, the writing styles of the literature review from other scholars will be examined in order to design the appropriate structure of the dissertation. Finally, the analysis of the literature regards BOR study will be conducted in the literature review stage.
1.1 Literature search
The literature search aims to acquire two types of the literature; the topic literature and the literature reviews in any research areas from other scholars. The topic literature which is the literature that relates to BOR study or contributes to the development of BOR study will be the key sources used in the literature review and the analysis throughout the dissertation. The literature reviews of other scholars which do not require to be relevant to BOR will be investigated in order to study the appropriate academic writing styles of the literature review and design the content structure of the dissertation.
The procedure of the literature search was adapted and principally follows the method suggested by Hart (2001). The process can be divided into two sub-stages; search preparation and planning, and the search.
1.1.1 Search preparation and planning
This stage focuses on preparing the information, limiting the scope of the search, selecting the tools and organising the search. Details for each task are described as follows.
1.1.1.1 Define the topic and keywords
For the topic literature, as the topic of the dissertation is “Behavioural Operational Research: Past, Present and Future”, the subject matter of the literature will be related to BOR study or the OR study that contributed to BOR study. Also, because the attention to the study of human behaviour takes part in the social science study, the disciplines of the literature are the operational research and the social science (Becker, 2016).
According to the method suggested by Hart (2001), the dictionaries and the encyclopaedias should be used to find the keywords associated with the topic. However, after approaching the dictionaries and the encyclopaedias, BOR has not yet been issued according to its novelty and the lack of the concrete definition according to the numerous possibilities of the study (Brocklesby, 2016; Franco and Hämäläinen, 2016; White, 2016). Therefore, the initial lists of keywords used for the search were decided based on the topic name as follows: ‘behavioural operational research’, ‘behavioural operations research’, ‘behaviour’ and ‘operational research’. For the literature reviews from other scholars, the keywords used to find the literature is ‘literature review’.
1.1.1.2 Identify the limitation of the topic
For the topic literature, the English literature published from 2000 to present, the grey literature, and the articles found on the internet will be included. The practical types of research such as the applications of BOR and the traditional OR that mentioned to the incorporation of human behaviour in the empirical approach, and the theoretical researches which focus on disclosing the phenomena of BOR study will be considered as the relevant work. The disciplines of the research involve in BOR study are the discipline of OR and the behavioural and social sciences (Brocklesby, 2016).
For the literature reviews of the other scholars, they could be the articles from any disciplines that were published by the accounted publishers. In this literature search, the literature reviews published in The European Journal of Operational Research (EJOR) were selected according to the quality of the articles and the contribution of the research to the OR study.
1.1.1.3 Select the main reference tools
The literature such as books and journals has been searched through ENCORE (the system provided by University of Warwick), Google Scholar, WorldCat, and ScienceDirect. The articles, presentations, news and documents on the internet were retrieved from Google search and the OR Society website. The dictionary of the Social Sciences (Calhoun, 2002) and The Blackwell dictionary of modern social thought (Outhwaite and Wiley InterScience (Online service), 2006) have been searched, however, the reference material of BOR has not yet been issued.
Walford’s guide to the reference material and Sources of the information in the social sciences contains the national bibliographies; encyclopaedias; essays, theses, reviews.
1.1.1.4 Housekeeping
Zotero is used as a tool to manage the references since it provides the references storing system and the add-ins which can be integrated with the word processor. The numbering system, file, and folder system are also used to organise the literature and articles in order to organise and track the reading and referencing at ease.
Figure 2.1 Searching process
1.1.2 The search
As the preparation and planning stage has provided the information needed in order to conduct the search, the search will be proceeded with the initial search, followed by the focused search and the broad search as shown in Figure 1.1.
The search starts by carrying out an initial search or a quick search suggested by Hart (2011) as a “trawling” process. It aims to obtain the key literature namely books, journal articles and published papers using the list of keywords through the reference tools as stated in the previous section. The elements of each research were investigated the relevance by carrying out the bibliographical analysis. Then the focused search was conducted to obtain more books and journal articles using the reference lists and the key authors obtained from the initial search. The focused search is referred to as the “mining” process (Hart, 2011). Similarly, the bibliographical analysis was performed to investigate the relevance of the literature found. After that, the broad search started by using the additional reference lists retrieved. Besides the grey literature such as web blogs, news, presentations and other documents found from the OR society and other websites were collected. Finally, the relevance of the published literature and the grey literature were examined using the bibliographical analysis. The trawling and mining process were repeated until the sources of the information are sufficient.
The details of the bibliographical analysis for the examination of different types of literature are shown in Table 1.
Type of the literature
Elements to be inspected
Details
Published literature
Books
Title and subtitle
The title and subtitle should lead to the perception of BOR study.
Preface
The preface is the introduction of the text as it expresses the why and the how of the book, the content to be covered, authors’ objectives, the motivation and the problems. Therefore it should show the relevance to the topic.
Biographical
The authors should be the key contributor to the area of the study.
Content lists
The content lists should present the relevance topic to be used in the research.
Bibliography
The reference lists should show that the content in the book has been obtained from the related area of study.
Journal articles
Abstract
The abstract could be written using the inductive or deductive reasoning. However, it should describe the content of the research that pertinent to the topic.
Introduction and conclusion
The introduction and the conclusion which contain the brief idea of the research, the objectives, the problems, the methodology used, the content structure and the outcome of the research should be relevant to the topic.
Bibliography
The reference lists should show that the content in the research has been obtained from the related area of study.
Grey literature
Presentation
Topic and Content
The topic of the literature should lead to the perception of BOR study. Also, after skimming the content, they should contain some parts involving the study of human behaviour in OR process.
Magazine
Web blog
Table 1 The detail of the bibliographical analysis of the literature
Apart from the bibliographical analysis that investigates the relevance of the literature, there are additional criteria to be examined in order to accumulate the literature into the analysis which are the authority and the seminal role of the literature. The authority of the literature and the reputation of the publication are the indicators which show the acknowledgement of the literature. The seminal role of the literature which can be observed from the number of cited times indicates that the literature has played an important role in the development of the area of study and significantly contributed to the subsequent work.
1.2 Content organisation
In this stage, the narrative and writing style of the literature reviews from other scholars were investigated and the content structure of the dissertation was designed regards the topics to be included as stated in the objective. After the reviewing the other’s work (Beliën and Forcé, 2012; Cardoen, Demeulemeester and Beliën, 2010; Carlo, Vis and Roodbergen, 2014; Gunasekaran, Ngai and McGaughey, 2006; Ho, 2008; SteadieSeifi et al., 2014; Syntetos et al., 2016; Van den Bergh et al., 2013), the following structure was created in order to narrate BOR study from the beginning to its present position and project the possibility of the study into the future.
¥ Introduction
¥ Definition of BOR
¥ The origination of BOR (Past)
¥ Reasons & importance
¥ Previous studies
¥ Related studies
¥ Current position of BOR (Present)
¥ Studies in behavioural OR
¥ Applications
¥ Future of BOR (Future)
¥ Future studies
¥ Challenges
First, the definition of behavioural operational research will be given and the definition from multiple scholars will be discussed. Second, the origination of BOR will be narrated starting from the reasons and the importance of incorporation human behaviour into OR processes and the associated issues regard conducting the traditional OR. The previous area of studies that contribute to BOR studies and related disciplines that the intervention of human behaviour will be discussed. Then, the current position of BOR study section will describe the current attention in BOR, the trend of the researches and the aspects of studies that lead to the various streams of study introduced by multiple scholar. Also, the example of applications or OR technology that applied human behaviour into the OR process will be given. Finally, the future of BOR will be analysed according to its development, the extent of study and the challenge of BOR study will be justified.
1.3 Literature review
This stage will result in answering questions to achieve the objectives which will be filled in the dissertation as structured in the previous section. The topic literature obtained from the literature search will be analysed as follows.
• The origination of BOR and its previous study fields
• The connections and differences between previous studies
• The aspects on reasons and the importance of incorporating behaviour into OR processes
• The assessment of development of BOR studies
• The current studies and applications of BOR
• The questions and issues that have been addressed about BOR
• Potential works and studies of BOR regard its development path and current position
The process for conducting the literature review was adapted from the methodology suggested by Hart (2011). First, the literature was read and classified in order to discover the purpose of the authors. Second, the arguments presented in the literature that related to BOR study were investigated to find the claims and the evidence provided by the authors. Third, the ideas and information retrieved from multiple pieces of literature were organised. After that, the ideas mapping and analysis was carried out to prepare the data for the writing by organising the linkages of the ideas between the literature. Finally, the accumulated knowledge from the literature and the analysis of the ideas were expressed by writing. The details of the tasks are described as follows.
1. Classifying and reading the literature
This task aims to discover the nature of the literature and acquaint the reader with the text and the motive of the literature before reading the literature in detailed. Skimming is the technique used in order to examine the title, content lists, abstract, preface or introduction to the literature to find the topic, the aim, the main idea and the structure of the literature. The understanding obtained from the initial read will help the reader to proceed the detailed reading (Hart, 2011).
2. Argumentation analysis
This task aims to find the statements and the idea claimed by the authors along with the associated supporting reasons and evidence that related to BOR study. The movements used to express the arguments in the text could either start from stating the point then provide the reason or begin with presenting the evidence then make a conclusion. This step also considered the fallacies made by the authors to validate the credibility of the arguments.
3. Organising and expressing ideas
After obtained the core ideas that related to the BOR study, multiple aspects from the variety of the scholars were analysed to differentiate the principles between them. Then, the different ideas and aspects were comprehensively synthesised to obtain the knowledge by integrating, reorganising and formulating the ideas. Also, the lexical (reportive) definition is the method used to present the understanding of the topic in this dissertation as it directly describes the meaning of the term to be understood.
4. Mapping and analysing ideas
This task is the investigation of the linkages between the ideas obtain from the previous step to form the geography of the research. Also, the ideas were classified into the categories to prepare for the presentation of the multiple aspects of the research in the writing stage. The feature map (mind map) was constructed as it provides the similarity and the difference between the ideas and the studies. The excel sheet was used to organise the ideas obtained from multiple literature.
5. Writing the review
Finally, the information and knowledge obtained from reading and the analysis of the literature will be written. The text normally consists of two parts namely, the knowledge based section and the argumentational section. The knowledge based element is the summary of the existing work, definitions, theories, concepts, the development of the study and the operations of the theory contributed to the study. The argumentational element is the critical evaluation of the knowledge obtained from the literature. The critical evaluation is mainly about giving the recommendation, finding the flaws in the previous work, proposing the solution to solve the problem and providing the argument of the proposal (Hart, 2011). Therefore, in this dissertation, the knowledge based section expresses the past and present of BOR study while the argumentational part proposes the ideas of the future of BOR study.
Chapter 2 Definition of Behavioural OR (1,000)
2.1 Introduction
Since the attention in the study of the impact between ‘Behaviour’ and ‘Operational Research’ was formally drawn in recent years, a definition of the term “Behavioural Operational Research” which was introduced by Hämäläinen, Luoma and Saarinen (2013) is still on the agenda. This chapter aims to provide the discussion on the aspects of specifying the definition of Behavioural OR from multiple scholars. Additionally, an explicit definition thus far, introduced by Becker (2016) is discussed.
2.2 Definition of Behavioural OR
The term “Behavioural Operational Research” (Behavioural OR), which was introduced by Hämäläinen, Luoma and Saarinen (2013), broadly refers to the study of the intervention of human behaviour into the OR processes. According to the fact that humans are involved in the OR process from the beginning, problem formulation, data collection, model construction, validation, and execution, for example, behavioural effects could emerge throughout conducting OR (Hämäläinen, Luoma and Saarinen, 2013). The study of the intervention of human behaviour in the OR process, therefore, is concerned with both the research into the human impact when conducting OR and the study of finding OR methods to model human behaviour (Hämäläinen, 2015).
Because there are many approaches to study human behaviour (Becker, 2016), and multiple disciplines could involve and enhance the behavioural study such as politics, economics, psychology and science (Brocklesby, 2016), Franco and Hämäläinen (2016) argued that providing a specific definition could limit the extent of the Behavioural OR study. In contrast, White (2016) believed that having no precise definition of Behavioural OR is one of the reasons that “the behavioural concerns are under-developed in OR” even though there are the earlier studies of the intervention of human behaviour in OR processes.
Becker (2016) who had researched on the tasks to develop the study area and investigated the unexpected difficulties in studying Behavioural OR, suggested a precise definition of Behavioural OR, which describes the features, the extent and the research agenda of the study. The definition given by Becker (2016) is presented and discussed as follows.
(1) “Behavioural OR is the sub-discipline of OR that
– in carrying forward the interdisciplinary tradition of OR,
– on the basis of the current level of theoretical, empirical and methodological insights in the social sciences, understood as a broad, multi-paradigmatic field,
– in close connection with recent problems and results of other OR sub-disciplines, including those with a strongly quantitative focus,
(2) studies the way in which insights into human behaviour can be integrated into OR techniques and the way in which the use of OR techniques shapes and is shaped by human interactions, in order to
(a) investigate, on a descriptive level, the consequences of the use of OR techniques in the social context of organizations,
(b) provide, on the level of methodology, concepts that allow for reflecting on the use of OR techniques in concrete practical settings, and,
(c) stimulate, on a technological level, the development of novel or improved OR techniques that enable organizations to make better decisions;
thereby contributing to realizing OR’s raison d’être and aspiration of being The Science of Better.”
The first part of the definition (1) highlights the position of Behavioural OR regarding OR, the parental discipline. It proposes that Behavioural OR aims to expand the research areas of OR by connecting knowledge with other disciplines from the social sciences. It also indicates that the attention to the study could be drawn on the known issues and results from other OR studies and related studies. This extent of the study can be considered as an initial research area for the scholars to draw the attention to the study in order to build the core notion of the discipline. However, this does not mean to limit the extent of the study according to the anxieties from other scholars as stated earlier. The future research can be expanded based on the knowledge from this core concept.
The second part of the definition (2) provides the directions to study Behavioural OR in which the knowledge could be built upon. It suggests that the research in Behavioural OR could be developed on three levels: understanding of behavioural effects in OR, constructing the tangible methods to formulate and intervene human behaviour in OR processes, and acquiring knowledge or improving OR procedures in order to fulfil the practicality of OR discipline. Similarly, these ideas could be considered as one of the initial themes or concepts of the study, not a single possible method. There are other streams of the study suggested by multiple scholars which are discussed in Chapter XX. Also, bearing in mind that the orientation of the study suggested by Becker (2016) is just the only one explicit aspect found thus far in the published journal. Therefore, this should not be considered as a single definition and the only approach to study Behavioural OR.