European Journal of Operational Research 268 (2018) 771–783

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

European Journal of Operational Research

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ejor

What is Community Operational Research?

Gerald Midgley a,b,c,d,e,∗, Michael P. Johnson f, George Chichirau f
a
Centre for Systems Studies, Business School, University of Hull, Hull, UK
b
School of Innovation, Design and Engineering, Mälardalen University, Eskilstuna, Sweden
c
Victoria Business School, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand
d
School of Political and Social Sciences, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand
e
School of Agriculture and Food Sciences, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
f
Department of Public Policy and Public Affairs, University of Massachusetts Boston, Boston, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Community Operational Research (Community OR) has been an explicit sub-domain of OR for more
Received 20 December 2016 than 30 years. In this paper, we tackle the controversial issue of how it can be differentiated from
Accepted 8 August 2017
other forms of OR. While it has been persuasively argued that Community OR cannot be defined by
Available online 13 August 2017
its clients, practitioners or methods, we argue that the common concern of all Community OR prac-
Keywords: tice is the meaningful engagement of communities, whatever form that may take – and the legitimacy of
Community operational research different forms of engagement may be open to debate. We then move on to discuss four other contro-
Community-based operations research versies that have implications for the future development of Community OR and its relationship with
Engaged OR its parent discipline: the desire for Community OR to be more explicitly political; claims that it should
Problem structuring methods be grounded in the theory, methodology and practice of systems thinking; the similarities and differ-
Process of OR ences between the UK and US traditions; and the extent to which Community OR offers an enhanced
understanding of practice that could be useful to OR more generally. Our positions on these controver-
sies all follow from our identification of ‘meaningful engagement’ as a central feature of Community
OR.
© 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.
This is an open access article under the CC BY license. (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

1. Introduction The term ‘Community OR’ was first coined in the United King-
dom (UK) in the mid-1980s at a time when public and private sec-
Community operational research is a child of the wider op- tor OR was in decline (Fildes & Ranyard, 1997), and the Operational
erational research (OR) movement, and the history of its emer- Research Society was looking for new application domains for the
gence and institutionalization has been extensively documented expertise of its members (Ritchie & Taket, 1994; Rosenhead, 1986).
(e.g., Carter, Jackson, Jackson, & Keys, 1987; Johnson, 2012a; Mar However, it is important to acknowledge that a good deal of work
Molinero, 1992; Midgley & Ochoa-Arias, 2004a; Parry & Mingers, applying OR to community development had already been done
1991; Ritchie, 1994; Ritchie, Taket, & Bryant, 1994a). While it can prior to that. In the United States (US), OR practitioners had been
be defined very broadly as “OR… for community development” working with community groups since the late 1960s (e.g., Ackoff,
(Midgley & Ochoa-Arias, 2004a, p.3), more detailed definitions can 1970) and in the UK since the mid-1970s (e.g., Jones & Eden, 1981;
attract controversy due to the diversity of practitioners, clients and Noad & King, 1977; Trist & Burgess, 1978). Nevertheless, creating
methods involved (Bryant, Ritchie, & Taket, 1994; Ritchie & Taket, the label ‘Community OR’ in the 1980s facilitated the emergence
1994; Ritchie, Taket, & Bryant, 1994b, 1994c). Most Community OR of a new, relatively coherent research community in the UK. As a
practitioners value participating in an inclusive research network, result, the number of community-based interventions significantly
embracing a variety of traditions, and overly restrictive definitions expanded (Ritchie & Taket, 1994). It would be some years later that
can create unwelcome exclusions (Midgley & Ochoa-Arias, 2004a). the same burgeoning interest would manifest in the USA under the
We will, however, revisit the possibility of a consensual definition label of ‘Community-Based Operations Research’ (Johnson, 2012b).
of Community OR in this paper. The similarities and differences between the UK and US traditions
will be commented upon later in this paper. While Community
∗
Corresponding author at: Centre for Systems Studies, Business School, Univer-
OR is much more widely international (for examples of practice
sity of Hull, Cottingham Road, Hull, HU6 7RX, UK. elsewhere in the world, see Ochoa-Arias, 2004; Waltner-Toews,
E-mail addresses: [email protected] (G. Midgley), [email protected] Kay, Murray, & Neudoerffer, 2004; Shen & Midgley, 2007;
(M.P. Johnson), [email protected] (G. Chichirau).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2017.08.014
0377-2217/© 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license. (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
772 G. Midgley et al. / European Journal of Operational Research 268 (2018) 771–783

White, Smith, & Currie, 2011; Foote, Baker, Gregor, Hepi, Houston & for focusing on these two characteristics can be found in the online
Midgley, 2007; Foote, Ahuriri-Driscoll, Hepi, Midgley, & Earl-Goulet, supplementary material to this paper.
2016; Velez-Castiblanco, Brocklesby, & Midgley, 2016; Beall & So, we argue that Community OR has inherited the focus on
Brocklesby, 2018; Espinosa & Duque, 2018; Laouris & Michaelides, modeling for intervention from its parent discipline, but what de-
2018; Morgan & Fa’aui, 2018; Pinzón-Salcedo & Torres-Cuello, 2018; fines it as different from other forms of OR? Bryant et al. (1994) of-
Romm, 2018; Ufua, Papadopoulos, & Midgley, 2018), it is neverthe- fer a really useful clarification of what cannot be used to define
less the UK and US traditions that have been most influential to Community OR. First, it cannot be defined by the characteristics
date. of its practitioners. While some have formal training in OR, oth-
In writing this paper, we have two interlinked objectives. First, ers come to it from a wide range of different disciplines and prac-
we will revisit a question that is frequently avoided due to the con- tices, such as mathematics, systems science, the social sciences and
troversies it can raise (Ritchie et al., 1994b; Midgley & Ochoa-Arias, even the humanities. Our anecdotal observation here, however, is
2004a): is there something that differentiates Community OR from that many ‘immigrants’ to our research community already have an
other forms of OR, beyond the broad idea that it involves appli- interest in application, transdisciplinarity and/or action research,
cations to community development? We will argue that the an- which makes the development and use of generic modeling meth-
swer is ‘yes’: it is the meaningful engagement of communities that ods for intervention appealing to them.
matters, although there is no consensus on what counts as ‘mean- Also, Community OR practitioners have a wide range of motiva-
ingful’ (Ufua et al., 2018) or even what constitutes a ‘community’ tions (Wong & Mingers, 1994), including “social, religious, personal,
(Midgley & Ochoa-Arias, 1999). However, disagreements on these career development, research and other reasons” (Bryant et al.,
things are not a problem for Community OR because they provide 1994, p. 232). So there is no one motivation that can be singled
useful stimuli for deliberation and learning. Indeed, there are other out as definitive of Community OR.
disagreements in our research community, and the second objec- It cannot be defined by a set of methods either: an extraordi-
tive of the paper is to discuss four more controversies that have nary variety of methodologies, methods and techniques have been
implications for the future development of Community OR and its deployed (Bryant et al., 1994). There is certainly more of an em-
relationship with its parent discipline. Our positions on these con- phasis on the use of problem structuring methods than is found
troversies all follow from our identification of ‘meaningful engage- in the rest of the OR literature, and some writers claim this is
ment’ as a central feature of Community OR. because community contexts entail greater complexity and plural-
ism of perspectives than most industrial and public sector contexts
2. Defining Community OR (e.g., Jackson, 1987a, 1988), but for these methods to be a defining
characteristic of Community OR, they would have to be used by
So far, there have been four edited books on Community OR everyone in all projects, and they are clearly not: there have been
(Ritchie et al., 1994a; Bowen, 1995; Midgley and Ochoa-Arias, a number of uses of quantitative methods reported in the UK liter-
2004b; Johnson, 2012b), and all of them use general phrases ature (e.g., Thunhurst & Ritchie, 1992; Thunhurst, Ritchie, Friend, &
like “OR… for community development” (Midgley & Ochoa-Arias, Booker, 1992; Cohen & Midgley, 1994; Mason, 1994; Pepper, 1994;
2004a, p.3). However, they stop short of offering a formal defini- Ritchie & Townley, 1994; Ritchie, 2004). Indeed, these constitute
tion of our field. Ritchie et al. (1994b, p.1) say: the majority of applications in the USA (Johnson, 2012b).
Bryant et al. (1994) hint that there may be something that is
“Let’s admit it, we’re going to cop out here and not offer a
common across all Community OR projects concerning the process
precise, neat and tidy definition of either Operational Research
of application of OR techniques. We will return to this insight later
(OR) or community Operational Research (Community OR). The
in the paper, not to suggest that it is a defining feature of Commu-
OR profession has struggled for many years to reach a succinct
nity OR, but to point to what OR more generally can learn from the
statement of OR which achieves broad agreement across OR
critical attitude that is commonly found in Community OR theory,
practitioners and has any meaning to a wider audience. It hasn’t
methodology and practice.
got there yet (some would argue it never will)…. The view we
Finally, Bryant et al. (1994) argue that Community OR cannot
take here is that precise definitions don’t really matter, or more
be defined by its clients. This is arguably their most important ob-
positively: ‘the proof of the pudding is in the eating’”.
servation, as it is very tempting, when we are asked what Com-
Midgley and Ochoa-Arias (2004a, p.1) argue that over-defining munity OR is, to simply say that it is OR with grass-roots com-
the field can result in marginalizing the concerns of some mem- munity groups and voluntary organizations. This is arguably how
bers of our research community. As a result, they portray Com- the field started out (e.g., Thunhurst et al., 1992; Gregory & Jack-
munity OR “as a label used by a variety of people engaged in a son, 1992a, 1992b; Thunhurst & Ritchie, 1992), but it rapidly went
debate and on-going learning about their own and other people’s beyond serving these more ‘obvious’ clients: the literature reveals
community development practices”. However, Midgley and Ochoa- applications with business organizations (e.g., Mason, 1994; Ritchie
Arias (2004a) go on to say that all Community OR practitioners & Townley, 1994; Ufua et al., 2018; Weaver, Crossan, Tan, & Pax-
have two things in common: “a desire to make a contribution to ton, 2018), the public sector (e.g., Pindar, 1994; Midgley, Munlo, &
change in communities” (p.2) and “a concern with the design of Brown, 1998; Grubesic & Murray, 2010; Foote, et al., 2016), volun-
methodologies, processes of engagement, methods and techniques” tary organizations providing services with statutory funding (e.g.,
(p.2). Of course, the latter is common across all branches of OR. Cohen & Midgley, 1994) and multi-agency teams or networks span-
As hinted at in the previous sentence, a useful starting point ning the public and voluntary sectors (e.g., Vahl, 1994; Midgley &
for a definition of Community OR is to look at how OR more gen- Milne, 1995; Gregory & Midgley, 20 0 0; Johnson, Gorr, & Roehrig,
erally has been understood, given that the former is a sub-domain 20 05; Boyd et al., 20 07; Hare, Alimadad, Dodd, Ferguson, & Ruther-
of the latter. A variety of definitions of OR have been offered over ford, 2009; Johnson et al., 2015), as well as many projects with
the years, although (as acknowledged by Ritchie et al., 1994b) none the more ‘obvious’ clients mentioned above. See also Johnson and
have been universally accepted. We do not expect our own offering Smilowitz (2007) and Johnson (2012b) for many other examples
to generate a consensus across our diverse research community, of applications stretching beyond community groups and voluntary
but we can nevertheless highlight a couple of widely-recognized organizations. Of course it could be argued that these applications
characteristics of OR that are relevant to Community OR too: in- are not actually Community OR and have been mislabeled, but in
tervention for desired change and the use of modeling. Our rationale our view this would be a retrograde step because it would impose
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an artificial boundary on practice that is both counter-intuitive and informing people’s intuitive judgments on what is and is not
anti-systemic: in most countries, to address the complex needs Community OR. By drawing out this principle, and showing that
and desires of grass-roots communities, there is often a need for it enables us to differentiate Community OR from non-Community
collaboration across the ‘traditional’ boundaries of business, public OR, we seek to counter the view (not in the literature, but some-
and third sector organizations in order to achieve change (Midgley, times expressed at meetings and conferences) that Community OR
Munlo, & Brown, 1997; Gregory & Midgley, 20 0 0; Taket & White, lost some coherence when it expanded from its early, sole focus on
20 0 0; White, 2018). Some forms of OR assume the existence of a grass-roots community groups and voluntary organizations. While
single problem owner, whereas many complex issues have multiple there might be some who wish the practice of Community OR
‘owners’ (Taket & White, 20 0 0). White (2018) says that Community had never broadened out, we believe it is a mistake to claim that
OR serves ‘social purpose organizations’, which may be in any sec- this has brought incoherence. It just involves a different coherence
tor or could be a multi-agency collective, so there is no assumption around the meaningful engagement of communities instead of ser-
of a single problem owner. However, we suggest that serving a so- vice only to grass-roots community groups and voluntary organi-
cial purpose organization is still not the defining feature of Commu- zations. So, let us explore the terms ‘engagement’ and ‘community’
nity OR, as there are examples of projects addressing complex is- a little more, to add clarity.
sues with no obvious owners at all, as they fall through the cracks We have chosen the word ‘engagement’ because it is broader
between existing agencies (e.g., Boyd, Brown, & Midgley, 2004). than other possible terms like ‘participation’. For example, there is
Bryant et al. (1994) speculate that maybe it is the type of is- a question mark over whether ‘consultation’ is a form of participa-
sue being dealt with rather than the category of client that defines tion, given that the former excludes the consulted from being part
Community OR, but we believe this is also incorrect: a very wide of the final decision that people are being consulted on: some peo-
range of issues have been addressed in Community OR projects, ple define consultation as a type of participation, and others treat
and arguably the only thing they have in common is that the participation and consultation as completely different, or even op-
authors writing about them have claimed that addressing them posite concepts (Arnstein, 1969; Richardson, 1983). However, con-
is a ‘good thing to do’. We suggest that belief in the value of sultation is clearly a form of engagement, as is full participation in
‘doing good’ (whatever that might mean in local contexts) is a decision making.
common characteristic of all Community OR practitioners, but it The more interesting question is whether any particular form
is not restricted to Community OR – for instance, some people of engagement can be justified as meaningful, and answering this
still go into Public Sector OR to do good, and they discuss val- usually requires a judgment in context. Whether a particular form
ues (e.g., Johnson et al., 2015), even though that field has be- of engagement is meaningful or not might depend on the expecta-
come increasingly technocratic over the years (Rosenhead, 1986; tions of citizens in the community, whether their representatives
Midgley & Ochoa-Arias, 2004a). Indeed, ‘doing good with good OR’ have the respect of the wider community and the authority to
has been adopted by INFORMS in the US as the name of a stu- speak on their behalf, whether the agenda is set by an organiza-
dent paper competition intended to highlight innovative public- tion but can be influenced by community representatives, whether
sector applications (INFORMS 2016a), and INFORMS has recently there is actually a need for the community to set the agenda
started a non-profit voluntary consulting initiative called ‘Pro Bono that organizations then respond to, etc. Ufua et al. (2018) explore
Analytics’ modeled after a similar UK project called ‘Pro-Bono the notion of meaningfulness, emphasizing the importance of pre-
OR’ (INFORMS 2016b). venting the co-option of community-based organizations (also see
So, should we give up on finding a definitive characteristic of Ochoa-Arias, 2004), and they conclude that
Community OR that differentiates it from other branches of the
“meaningful community engagement involves enabling people
profession? We say ‘no’. Below, we offer what we believe distin-
from local communities to have a substantial input into framing
guishes Community OR from other forms of OR, including those
both the issues to be discussed and potential actions to address
forms that are motivated by the desire to ‘do good’ in society but
them, whether the issues are first raised as a concern by the
nobody would claim are Community OR.
community itself or by a private or public sector organization
The critical characteristic we identify as being necessary for a
wanting that community’s involvement”.
project to be described as Community OR is the meaningful engage-
ment of a community (or communities). Now, let us first of all make
clear that this does not presuppose a particular theory of commu- We see the latter as a reasonable heuristic to employ when
nity or methodology of engagement; there are numerous theories considering whether an engagement is meaningful or not: are
that can help us make sense of what a community is (Midgley & communities, and/or their legitimate representatives, able “to have
Ochoa-Arias, 1999) and there are even more methodologies that a substantial input into framing both the issues to be discussed
offer principles and methods for structuring engagement (Jackson, and potential actions to address them”? If the answer is ‘yes’, then
1988, 1991; Midgley, 20 0 0). However, it does presuppose that, for the project qualifies as Community OR.
every project that someone claims is an example of Community If the answer is debatable, some justification might be needed.
OR, it should be possible to explain what constitutes ‘the commu- For example, Midgley et al. (1998) discuss a project on housing
nity’. This might be residents in a geographical locale, the mem- for older people where older people themselves were engaged in
bers of a self-help group, a sub-category of the population with a wide-ranging exercise of systemic service design, but were then
particular needs or desires, an under-served or marginalized sec- excluded by the statutory authorities from a workshop that was
tion of the population, an interest group, or even a geographically going to determine the latter’s organizational response to the OR
dispersed set of people interacting online. It should also be pos- report that had been produced. The Community OR practitioners
sible to say what makes the engagement meaningful rather than made the judgment that they could design the workshop to en-
tokenistic or absent. sure the older people’s concerns were strongly represented – in-
Importantly, we claim that this way of distinguishing our deed, they turned the vision of the housing service that the older
field does not impose radically new boundaries, thus excluding people wanted into evaluation criteria to test the adequacy of the
projects that have previously been accepted as Community OR. statutory agencies’ plans (and also used other techniques to ensure
This is therefore not a move to marginalize participants in our re- the ideas of the older people were respected in the development
search community. Rather, we believe we are making explicit a of those plans). In this case, Midgley et al. (1998) argued that the
value or ‘principle of practice’ that has always tacitly been there, meaningfulness of the engagement was preserved.
774 G. Midgley et al. / European Journal of Operational Research 268 (2018) 771–783

The other term of interest here is ‘community’. What con- stantial input into framing the issues to be tackled and how they
stitutes a ‘community’ that ought to be meaningfully engaged? are to be addressed, that matters.
Midgley and Ochoa-Arias (1999) have addressed this question, ar-
guing that different political traditions define ‘community’ in dif- 3. Addressing controversies
ferent ways, so the explicit or tacit political assumptions of Com-
munity OR practitioners (and those made by influential stake- This definition of Community OR can now be taken forward to
holders) end up framing both who comes to be engaged in help us address some abiding controversies in our field. We should
projects and indeed what Community OR as a practice should acknowledge that some of these controversies have been discussed
be. Examples of political theories of community include welfare in the literature, but others represent tensions that bubble be-
and radical liberalism; classical Marxism and neo-Marxism; and neath the surface; they may be the subject of informal conversa-
participative-democratic, historical, religious and green communi- tions at meetings and conferences, but do not always get an air-
tarianism. Indeed, we do not have to be limited to the political ing in papers and formal conference presentations. However, they
theories already in the literature, as it is perfectly possible for are no less important because of this. We have selected four par-
reflections on Community OR theory, methodology and practice ticular controversies as foci, partly because they have been sig-
to give rise to new perspectives on how communities should be nificant in relation to the positioning of our own practice, and
viewed. partly because revealing the defining feature of Community OR as
There is the possibility of a tension in Community OR regard- the meaningful engagement of communities helps us throw new
ing the role of privilege in defining ‘community’. Surely not all light on them. The four controversies are whether Community OR
communities are equal in terms of needs/deprivation, or orienta- should be more explicitly political; whether it should be grounded
tion towards social improvement? The question of whether one in systems thinking; what the consequences are of the similarities
might place extra emphases on some types of community rather and differences between the US and UK traditions; and whether
than others on the basis of relative deprivation or marginalization, Community OR offers an enhanced understanding of practice that
and the issue of whether some definitions of community make could be useful to OR more generally. There are no doubt other
these things less visible, are things that Community OR practi- controversies that could have been tackled, but these will have to
tioners could usefully reflect on. Critically, Midgley and Ochoa- wait for another day.
Arias (1999) argue that, if Community OR practitioners fail to
reflect on their own assumptions about what communities are, 3.1. Should Community OR be more explicitly political?
they are likely to default to the understanding of community that
is dominant in their wider society. Many may be content with The above question has been a subject of considerable debate,
this, but if they are not, they need to ensure that their practice with strong points being made by those answering both ‘yes’ and
supports the vision of community that they want to see being ‘no’, although only those saying ‘yes’ have written up their views in
developed. academic papers (Rosenhead & Thunhurst, 1982; Rosenhead, 1986;
It would be possible for us to identify our own preferred theory Midgley & Ochoa-Arias, 1999). The essence of our argument is that
(or theories) of community, but in the context of the current paper, ‘meaningful engagement’ has been understood by a variety of au-
this is not the point: as a spur to learning, research communities thors with reference to political philosophies, especially concern-
need a degree of heterogeneity, so we simply ask practitioners to ing the value of citizen participation in deliberative democracy and
think about and explain their assumptions about community and civil society dialogues. However, even authors who prefer not to
how these have informed their practice, if and when this arises in view ‘meaningful engagement’ politically have the opportunity to
debate. Also, our research network needs to reflect more generally learn from methodological debates on what the meaningful engage-
on the ‘who, what, why and how’ of community engagement, and ment of communities means, and this is of great value to Commu-
what kinds of pragmatic compromises on meaningful engagement nity OR.
can be accepted as legitimate in what contexts – and conversely, There have been two different reasons advanced for taking an
what might constitute ‘one compromise too far’. explicitly political stance. One concerns the history of OR. After
We said earlier that we could point to the difference between the 2nd World War, many people went into OR with the ex-
Community OR and other domains of OR practice (e.g., public sec- plicit motivation of contributing to social improvement, and indeed
tor OR). The criterion of ‘meaningful engagement of communities’ Rosenhead (1986) says that some had explicitly socialist ideals.
helps in this regard. Examples of perfectly legitimate interventions However, over the years, our parent discipline has largely become a
that do not include any aspect of community engagement include problem solving service, supporting the interests of industrial own-
some of the application-orientated chapters in Pollock, Rothkopf, ers and managers, often without regard for the often very differ-
and Barnett’s (1994) important survey of public sector OR: for ent interests of shop floor workers and their broader communities
instance, Odoni, Rousseau, and Wilson (1994), on modeling ur- (Rosenhead & Thunhurst, 1982; Rosenhead, 1986). By being more
ban and air transportation; and Weyant (1994), on energy policy explicitly political, we might usefully recover the sense of serving
applications. Note that there are also examples of public sector our wider community and not just narrowly-defined organizational
OR where there was actually community engagement that could clients.
be described as meaningful (e.g., Gregory, Romm, & Walsh, 1994; The second argument comes from Midgley and Ochoa-Arias
Walsh, 1995; Gregory & Romm, 2001; Foote et al., 2016; Lee, Chen, (1999) who, as we saw in the previous section, point out that the
Pietz, & Beneke, 2009, Jehu-Appiah et al., 2008; Ewing & Baker, term ‘community’ means something quite distinct in the various
2009), and we would argue that these are also Community OR. There different political traditions, so if we want to avoid supporting the
can be overlaps between Community OR and other branches of political status quo through our Community OR practice, we should
the discipline too: Mason’s (1994), Ritchie and Townley’s (1994), reflect on the kind of community we want to build.
Ufua et al.’s (2018) and Weaver et al.’s (2018) projects working In contrast, those against thinking of Community OR as po-
with businesses in a community-engaged manner are also exam- litically engaged point to the fact that ‘doing good’, for them,
ples. Bryant et al. (1994) are absolutely right to say that Commu- means doing something of value in a particular local context, usu-
nity OR is not defined by the nature of its clients: it is the mean- ally for community groups or voluntary organizations whose mis-
ingful engagement of communities, with the latter having a sub- sion is dear to their hearts. The survey of practitioners under-
taken by Wong and Mingers (1994) makes it clear that the major-
 G. Midgley et al. / European Journal of Operational Research 268 (2018) 771–783 775

ity think like this. Thus, they have strong and explicitly-declared In looking at the above three examples, we see that political
value-based commitments to their practice, but not necessarily and methodological concerns are tightly intertwined, so even if a
any desire to change wider society. From this perspective, the ori- Community OR practitioner is only interested in good methodologi-
gins of Community OR in the Marxist position of Rosenhead and cal practice for meaningful engagement, this can hardly avoid hav-
Thunhurst (1982) are either an irrelevance or something they ing political implications.
would prefer to distance themselves from, as they would not want
the groups and organizations they support to think that their OR 3.2. Does Community OR need systems thinking?
practice has ulterior political motives.
In our view, both sides in this debate have valid concerns, and Here we argue that there is a systems approach called ‘bound-
Community OR needs to be broad enough to include both those ary critique’ that is particularly useful for Community OR. How-
who do and those who do not have political motivations. That said, ever, it is important not to get trapped into the paradigm war that
we believe that viewing ‘meaningful engagement of the commu- has erupted every so often over the years, where operational re-
nity’ as the defining characteristic of Community OR has signif- searchers and systems thinkers have tried to make the methodol-
icant implications: while the majority of people in our research ogy and practice of the other a sub-set of their own. It is far better
network may not be interested in having their politics explicitly in- to regard OR and systems thinking as two overlapping communi-
fluence their practice, we argue that assumptions about what con- ties of practice that can learn from exploring their common con-
stitutes both a ‘community’ and ‘meaningful engagement’ are al- cerns.
ways present. This means that learning focused on explicating the The place of systems thinking has been contentious, and the de-
assumptions made in Community OR practice should be very use- bate has a history that goes back long before the advent of Com-
ful for advancing our field, whether or not these assumptions are munity OR (Keys, 1991). Therefore, a brief exploration of the more
labeled as ‘political’. general issue around the relationship between systems and OR is
It is also possible to develop new methodologies and meth- worthwhile to place the debate in Community OR in some histori-
ods based on learning about what constitutes good practice in cal context.
the meaningful engagement of communities. There are already As mentioned previously, the proponents of OR and systems
some examples of this happening, including several where their thinking are both concerned with modeling for intervention, and
authors are explicit about their political commitments. For in- every so often disagreements erupt between them as to which
stance, Christakis and Bausch (2006) define meaningful engage- is the sub-domain of the other (Keys, 1991). Stainton (1983) de-
ment in terms of participatory democracy, and they offer a method- clares, with some conviction, that systems thinking is a part of OR,
ology that is consciously designed to facilitate the fair participation and this makes intuitive sense because there are methodologies for
of everybody involved. This has been used in Community OR by intervention that are explicitly systemic and others that are not.
Laouris and Michaelides (2018). Conversely, Checkland (1981, 1985) says that the large majority of
Likewise, Walsh (1995) and Gregory and Romm (2001) have problematic situations are complex and characterized by a plural-
developed a Community OR methodology to enable more of a ity of perspectives, so a systems approach is needed to address
‘level playing field’ in dialogue between organizational stakehold- them, but there is a sub-set of problems that are clearly defined
ers and community participants, and this is explicitly based on and merely complicated (rather than complex), where quantitative,
Habermas’s (1984a, 1984b) political philosophy. Habermas argues optimizing OR techniques come into their own.
that the systemic exercise of power can be countered through the One approach to resolving this recurring disagreement is to try
engagement of communities in normative public discourse. They to distinguish OR and systems thinking more clearly, so they can
provide an example of a project that enabled blind and partially be separated. To this end, Hirschheim (1983) says that systems ap-
sighted users of a hospital, as well as professionals from vari- proaches are concerned with the synthesis of hitherto fragmentary
ous hospital-based disciplines, to challenge taken for granted un- knowledge to facilitate the emergence of new, synergistic, widely-
derstandings of ‘service quality’. Their methodology also makes shared understandings and actions, and they are therefore useful in
the practitioner accountable for their decision making during an the context of high levels of complexity and multiple perspectives.
intervention (also see Romm, 2001), and we suggest that this In contrast, he says that OR is reductionist (breaking things down
sort of issue is vital to building our understanding of ‘meaningful into parts) and analytical (as opposed to emergent), and therefore
engagement’. is useful for more manageable problems where mathematical anal-
A final example is use of Critical Systems Heuristics (Ulrich, ysis can optimize policies and performance without controversy.
1983) in several Community OR projects (e.g., Cohen & Midgley, However, we need to say straight away that this division be-
1994; Midgley, 1997a, 20 0 0; Midgley et al., 1997, 1998; Boyd et al., tween systems and OR is no longer accurate or credible (if in-
2004), as this provides a list of 12 questions that stakeholders of deed it ever was), because we have had problem structuring meth-
any service system can use to formulate their views on what it ods in OR since the 1970s (e.g., Rosenhead, 1989; Rosenhead &
currently is and what it ought to be. Ulrich (1983, 1996) is explicit Mingers, 2001), including some that are not based on systems
that his political aim (building on the work of Habermas, 1976) is thinking (e.g., Keeney, 1992; Eden & Ackermann, 2001; Friend,
to provide a tool that empowers ordinary citizens to communicate 20 01; Rosenhead, 20 01), yet are equally capable of addressing sit-
their preferences for service development and to challenge profes- uations characterized by complexity and a plurality of viewpoints.
sionals who refuse to listen. A distinguishing characteristic of his There are also some systems approaches that enable quantifica-
12 questions is that they can be answered equally well by profes- tion and/or optimization (e.g., Forrester, 1961; Hall, 1962; Quade &
sionals, service users and community members with no previous Boucher, 1968; Jenkins, 1969; Optner, 1973; Quade, Brown, Levien,
experience of planning and management (Midgley, 1997b, 20 0 0). Majone, & Rakhmankulov, 1978; Miser and Quade, 1985, 1988). The
Indeed, service users often produce more detailed and far-reaching fields of OR and systems thinking are much more entangled than
plans than professionals, as the former are less constrained in their Hirschheim’s (1983) analysis would suggest.
thinking by what current organizations will allow. A finding that In spite of this entanglement, we believe that there is a way to
has been repeated several times is that the professionals welcome understand the difference between OR and systems thinking, and
the user visions of what their services ought to be doing (Midgley, this can allow us to demonstrate that moves to subsume one field
20 0 0). This again addresses the question of what constitutes mean- within the other are potentially damaging. We will make three ob-
ingful engagement, and how it can be practiced in Community OR. servations. First, the ‘transdisciplines’ of systems thinking and sys-
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tems science include a wide range of theories and practices that that could answer very few policy questions because they were not
are applied to phenomena well beyond the purview of operational designed with more selective foci in mind (Lee, 1973).
researchers, such as biological organisms, families and galaxies, to Second, Friend (2004) criticizes systems thinkers for viewing or-
name but three (Midgley, 2003). Second, OR practitioners have ganizations as relatively stable systems evolving over time. He says
developed a range of optimization and other mathematical mod- this introduces a limiting assumption into Community OR practice:
eling techniques that are not generally researched or applied by that we should be working with formal organizations in relatively
systems thinkers, even though the latter accept their utility for long term projects instead of building transitory alliances to ad-
complicated but clearly defined problems (Checkland, 1981; Jack- dress social issues that might cut across organizational and com-
son & Keys, 1984). Third, the previous two observations give us a munity boundaries. Working with stable organizations often makes
clue as to what is really going on: OR and systems thinking are sense in public or private sector OR, where the effectiveness and
best thought of, not as fields of practice, but as overlapping but efficiency of organizations are the focus, but we agree with Friend
differentiated research communities (Midgley & Ochoa-Arias, 2004a). that many Community OR projects address an issue of concern to a
The overlap concerns intervention in purposeful human systems of community rather than managers of an organization; may involve
various kinds. Subsumption of one research community within the representatives of multiple organizations and informal groups; may
other, whichever ends up dominant, is potentially damaging be- only be in existence for a limited period of time; and only some-
cause it could result in the marginalization or elimination of sig- times set out to improve just one organization.
nificant areas of theory, methodology and/or practice. Instead of Midgley and Ochoa-Arias (2004a) address the first of these is-
aiming for subsumption, it is far better to reframe the overlap be- sues, and they identify a particular systems approach (boundary
tween systems and OR as an opportunity for learning across research critique) that does not make the above assumption about compre-
community boundaries where there are common interests. Also see hensiveness. They do not tackle the second issue, but we will ar-
Midgley and Richardson (2007) for a similar argument for learning gue that boundary critique also avoids a focus on organizations-
across the boundaries of systems thinking, cybernetics and com- as-systems. This is therefore of particular relevance to Community
plexity science. OR. Below, we summarize the essence of boundary critique (nec-
We have discussed the historical tensions between OR and sys- essarily leaving out a lot of detail about understanding conflict
tems thinking because they explain why, when the place of sys- and marginalization processes) before showing how it addresses
tems thinking within Community OR was discussed in an edited Friend’s concerns.
book (Midgley and Ochoa-Arias, 2004b), it was quite a sensitive At its most basic, boundary critique is about reflecting on the
issue for some participants. Nevertheless, we believe that the di- boundaries of inclusion and exclusion in systems/OR projects (e.g.,
alogue between the authors of the various chapters quickly tran- Ulrich, 1983, 1987; Midgley et al., 1998; Midgley, 20 0 0; Midgley &
scended early fears of disciplinary imperialism, and it unfolded in Pinzón, 2011). While in the early days of systems thinking, organi-
the spirit of mutual learning that we advocated in the previous zations were seen as real-world systems (e.g., Kast & Rosenzweig,
paragraph. Hence, new arguments for and against a systems ap- 1972) and the focus was on supporting their management (e.g.,
proach emerged that are potentially of wider value to the OR com- Emery, 1993), in the work of Churchman (1970) and particularly
munity, as shared below. Ulrich (1983), the focus shifted away from organizations as such to
It is very clear, just by looking at the sheer number of Commu- the boundary judgments made in OR projects that determine who
nity OR papers discussing the benefits of systems thinking, that will participate and what will be the focus, mostly beyond single
the latter has been highly influential: we found 46 in our lit- organizational agendas (Córdoba & Midgley, 2008). A boundary is
erature search, and some examples with different emphases are a conceptual marker of the inclusion and exclusion of both par-
Jackson (1987a, 1991), Keys (1987), Midgley (1989, 1990, 1996a, ticipants and the issues that concern them, and there are usually
20 0 0), Gregory and Jackson (1992a, 1992b), Ochoa-Arias (1994, multiple possibilities for setting boundaries (Midgley, 20 0 0).
1996, 1998, 20 0 0), Midgley and Reynolds (20 01, 20 04a), White If boundary critique had inherited some of the early assump-
(2003), Walsh and Hostick (2005), Walsh, Grant, and Coleman tions of systems science from the 1950s, Friend would be right to
(2008), Thunhurst (2013) and Sommer and Mabin (2016). It may be concerned that there is a preoccupation with comprehensive-
be that systems thinking has been so influential because most of ness. In the work of von Bertalanffy (1956) and Boulding (1956),
the problems surfacing in community contexts are characterized the priority was to transcend the arbitrary limitations of disci-
by complexity, multiple perspectives and power relationships, and plinary boundaries by developing a general system theory (GST)
many systems approaches come into their own in these contexts that can describe the generic properties of all systems (e.g., cells,
(Jackson, 1988). However, it could simply be that systems thinkers organs, organisms, families, organizations, communities, ecosys-
and problem structuring researchers wanting to make a beneficial tems, planets, solar systems and galaxies). In GST, a systems view
social impact gravitated to Community OR in the 1980s because (understanding the properties of systems in general and analyz-
it was then a relatively undefined field that offered them oppor- ing particular systems with reference to these) is said to be the
tunities to practice that were less available in more ‘mainstream’ most comprehensive view that it is possible to attain. However,
OR contexts where uses of quantitative optimization methods were the advocates of boundary critique have explicitly distanced them-
the norm (Bryant et al., 1994). selves from this understanding of comprehensiveness. Following
In the face of this influence of systems thinking, John Friend Churchman (1970), it is Ulrich (1983, 1987) in particular who ar-
(one of the leading early practitioners of both problem structuring gues that the systems idea highlights the bounded nature of all
methods and Community OR) raises two concerns. First, he sug- understandings, and hence the inevitable lack of comprehensive-
gests that the advocates of systems approaches are overly inter- ness in any OR project. Midgley and Ochoa-Arias say it is the latter
ested in comprehensive modeling. He argues that comprehensive- view of comprehensiveness that is useful in Community OR, and it
ness is never actually achievable, so it is more productive to learn is the same thing as Friend’s idea of working with selectivity:
to work with selectivity (Friend & Hickling, 1997). We agree that,
“So, let us return to the work of Friend and Hickling (1997) who
if building a comprehensive model of the problematic situation is
argue that striving to be comprehensive in analyses is problem-
a primary goal of practice, then this can lead to ‘paralysis by anal-
atic because, in “difficult and complex planning problems the
ysis’ because any amount of detail could potentially be included.
norms of linearity, objectivity, certainty and comprehensiveness
Indeed, there is strong evidence from the 1960s and early 1970s
keep on breaking down” (p.22). If one defines comprehensive-
that systems thinkers fell into the trap of building ‘super models’
 G. Midgley et al. / European Journal of Operational Research 268 (2018) 771–783 777

ness as conformity to the saying “don’t do things by halves” the issue in focus, or they may make the case that it is accept-
(Friend & Hickling, 1997, p.21), then we couldn’t agree more. able to involve a smaller number of representatives. These are both
However, if we follow Churchman and subsequent writers in boundary judgments. Given that there may be marginalization in
the systems domain, we need to recognise a crucial paradox. the community, and this can be understood in terms of boundaries
By viewing the pursuit of comprehensiveness as dealing with its of inclusion and exclusion (Midgley, 1992, 1994; Midgley & Pinzón,
inevitable absence, and by making this explicit in the form of 2011), what counts as ‘meaningful’ engagement can become quite
boundary judgements that can be explored and critiqued, we important: projects that fail to identify and address marginaliza-
are likely to be more comprehensive than if we simply take our tion risk entrenching it (Midgley, 20 0 0), and to be called ‘mean-
boundary judgements for granted. It is our contention that this ingful’, an engagement process has to give space for marginalized
is actually quite similar to Friend & Hickling’s (1997) prescrip- groups to express themselves in a safe environment (Midgley &
tion, “learn to work with selectivity” (p.22). Being selective es- Milne, 1995; Midgley, 1997b; Midgley & Pinzón, 2013).
sentially means, to use systems terminology, making boundary So our perspective is that systems thinking can indeed be use-
judgments” (Midgley & Ochoa-Arias, 2004a, p.11). ful to Community OR, both in terms of offering theory, methodol-
ogy and methods of value to practice (as in the 46 papers taking
We also argue that boundary critique takes us beyond a systems approach that were mentioned earlier), and also to un-
the assumption of stable organizations-as-systems, which Friend derstand how practitioners may take different perspectives on what
(2004) argues leads to longer-term OR projects that serve single is and is not legitimate Community OR. Indeed, the systems theory
organizations instead of transitory alliances to address issues cut- of boundary critique potentially offers a way to understand explo-
ting across organizational and community boundaries. Clearly, if rations of these issues of legitimacy in the context of practice, as
boundaries are conceptual markers and not the real-world edges practitioners come into dialogue with participants and stakehold-
of organizations, it is easy to define projects that are inclusive ers who may have different views on their project than themselves.
of community (and multi-stakeholder) concerns. Indeed, boundary However, having argued for the value of systems thinking, we
critique encourages this by asking the practitioner to consider the wish to end this section by re-affirming the point that we made
consequences of using different boundaries (Midgley, 20 0 0). Also, earlier: this does not imply any ‘take-over’ by the systems com-
more recent work using this systems approach has highlighted the munity. We strongly believe that Community OR needs to be a
importance of considering time boundaries as well as boundaries broad church, and where there are common interests across the
that establish the extent of participation in framing the issues to OR and systems communities (and indeed other communities), the
be addressed (Midgley & Shen, 2007; Hodgson, 2013, 2016; Shen strengths and weaknesses of all perspectives can be discussed in a
& Midgley, 2015). Hence, the idea of transitory strategic alliances spirit of mutual learning.
that Friend (2004) advocates can be understood using boundary
critique, as can the idea of longer-term projects taking community- 3.3. What are the similarities and differences between the US and UK
led change management through to implementation. Which should traditions of Community OR?
be the focus is a matter for the practitioner and stakeholders to
choose, based on the requirements of the project and any prag- The title of this subsection should not be interpreted as imply-
matic constraints (including the time of the participants) that need ing that there are only two nationalities of interest; as mentioned
to be respected. earlier, Community OR is much more widely international, but the
Our own view is that Friend’s understanding of transitory “ne- US and UK traditions have been particularly influential. We argue
gotiated project engagement” (Friend, 2004, p.177) is very useful, in this sub-section that US OR as a whole has adopted a narrower
and so is the systems theory of boundaries as it has been ap- boundary of legitimate practice than UK OR, and the contrasting
plied in Community OR (see especially Midgley et al., 1998, 2007; boundaries of legitimacy in the two nations have informed how
Midgley, 20 0 0, 2016; Boyd et al., 2004; Córdoba & Midgley, 2006; Community OR has been differently framed and developed. Never-
Foote et al., 2007; Midgley & Pinzón, 2013; Barros-Castro, Midg- theless, it is very clear that, regardless of which framing is used,
ley, & Pinzón, 2015; and Ufua et al., 2018). Indeed, these two Community OR can only deal with questions of meaningful en-
ways of understanding practice are pointing in the same direction: gagement if it can offer an enhanced methodology of ‘engaged OR’
Friend (2004) explains the nature and importance of temporary that stands in comparison with expert- and client-driven forms
community-engaged alliances, and Midgley (20 0 0) and his collabo- of OR that are less concerned with either community- or wider-
rators provide the theory and methodology of boundary critique to stakeholder engagement.
deepen our understanding of how these alliances can take account The US tradition is one that focuses almost exclusively on quan-
of multiple perspectives, value conflicts and marginalization. The titative modeling. Certainly, it has long embraced applications in
latter can all be understood in terms of how stakeholders make the public sector. Examples include public service OR initiatives
and defend boundary judgments (Midgley & Pinzón, 2011). such as the Operations Research in Public Affairs program held at
We are now in a position to tie this discussion back to the MIT in 1966; and the Science and Technology Task Force of 1967,
definition of Community OR offered earlier. If the meaningful en- which initiated the quantitative analysis of criminal justice prob-
gagement of communities is a characteristic of all Community OR lems and influenced the set of methods used in the prosecution of
projects, then we have to recognize that what counts as a legiti- the Vietnam war (Johnson, 2012a). A seminal compendium of pub-
mate ‘community’ to engage with actually depends on a boundary lic sector OR applications from 1994 includes chapters on health
judgment. This boundary judgment may already be decided in the care, energy, natural resources, criminal justice and others (Pollock
mind of the practitioner if he or she is following a given political et al., 1994). In addition, INFORMS has been strongly promoting
theory of community, or what counts as a community may be ex- public sector OR (Kaplan, 2016).
plored as part of the project without any pre-judged boundaries. However, in 2009, 49 prominent UK-based scholars wrote a let-
In this situation, it is possible that a vision of community will be ter (Ackermann, Bawden, Bosch, Brocklesby, Bryant et al., 2009) to
emergent, but it will still be dependent on an implicit or explicit the editor of the INFORMS professional magazine, OR/MS Today, ad-
boundary judgment made sometime during the project. vocating for problem structuring methods (sometimes called ‘soft
Understanding ‘meaningful engagement’ also relies on bound- OR’) and other non-traditional (from the US perspective) analytic
ary judgments, in the sense that the practitioner may believe it is approaches. This generated a response from the editor of the IN-
necessary to involve everyone in the community concerned with FORMS flagship journal, Operations Research, asserting that “Our
778 G. Midgley et al. / European Journal of Operational Research 268 (2018) 771–783

objective is to serve the community by publishing high quality pa- hanced OR’ (Jackson, 1987a, 1988), which enlarges the notion of
pers that are based on rigorous mathematical models and demon- OR as a rigorous, analytically-focused problem-solving discipline to
strate potential impact on practice”, and when OR applications “are address notions of critical thinking and stakeholder/community en-
not based on rigorous mathematical models, Operations Research gagement via action research and a deeper understanding of the
is not the appropriate outlet for such papers” (Simchi-Levi, 2009, diversity of problem contexts within which OR may be deployed.
p.21). Although Mingers (2011a) presented an introduction to prob- While Community-Based Operations Research allows for diverse
lem structuring methods for a US audience, this kind of practice is understandings of problem identification, formulation, solution and
still barely visible within the US branch of the profession (and in implementation to enable a more inductive, critical, iterative and
other areas of the world that follow the lead of the US in defin- community-engaged notion of OR (in a sense, a superset of tradi-
ing our discipline). The perspective of Simchi-Levi still represents tional US-style OR), Community OR as we explore it in this pa-
the contemporary understanding of OR in the US, despite the fact per proposes something even more fundamental: an awareness
that INFORMS has inaugurated journals addressing diverse appli- that engagement drives the choice of problem-solving approach
cation areas (e.g., strategy, organizational development, service sci- and methods, and cannot be seen as an ‘optional extra’. In this
ence and marketing) and OR is extending its embrace to ‘analytics’, sense, we cannot accept that a Community OR practitioner has the
which is not solely focused on prescriptive decision modeling (e.g., right to unilaterally diagnose a problem context that clearly arises
Liberatore & Luo, 2010; Mortenson, Doherty, & Robinson, 2014). from a community need without at least some degree of engage-
In contrast, since the late 1970s, the UK OR community has ment with relevant community members or representatives. The
broadened its understanding of the discipline to include problem researcher may conclude that people’s understandings of the con-
structuring methods (e.g., Rosenhead, 1989; Rosenhead & Mingers, text are inadequate, and be able to justify this, but refusing to en-
2001), Soft OR (e.g., Ackermann, 2012) and Community OR (e.g., gage at all is not legitimate if an application is to be labeled ‘Com-
Ritchie et al., 1994a; Midgley & Ochoa-Arias, 2004b). A typical mo- munity OR’.
tivation for this broadening is given by Ackoff (1979a, 1979b), a Having discussed ‘enhanced OR’, we should acknowledge that
high-profile US-based researcher who argued that “the future of this term can be seen to imply that other forms of OR are simplis-
operational research is past” (Ackoff, 1979a, p.93) if it will not em- tic. Clearly this is not the case. We may call this engaged OR rather
brace change. He made the case that we increasingly need to deal than enhanced OR – and, when there is direct engagement with
with issues characterized by complexity and stakeholder disagree- local communities, this is, in addition, Community OR.
ment, and participative, design-orientated systems approaches are We suggest that a new conception of engaged OR can add
better able to deal with these than mathematical modeling tech- real value to addressing many difficult problems of public interest
niques. However, his call for change fell on deaf ears in the USA, when at least one of three conditions are manifest (and of course
and he therefore abandoned the OR community. whether they are manifest is open to debate):
It was in the context of the much more constrained US def-
1. Stakeholder and/or community engagement is essential to un-
inition of OR that one of us (Michael Johnson) sought, in 2007,
derstanding and/or addressing the problem in focus;
to put a name to some then-recent public sector OR applications
2. A modeling perspective that embraces methodological plural-
that seemed to have a focus on research with and in the com-
ism (multi-methodology or mixed methods) can productively
munity, inspired by Ackoff’s (1970) seminal paper on community-
deal with the complexities at hand better than a single method
engaged OR in an inner city neighborhood of Philadelphia. Johnson
design; and
wanted a new emphasis on OR applications for neighborhood revi-
3. Marginalization and obstructive power relations make the need
talization and social change. The paper that resulted used a phrase,
for a critical approach (including boundary critique) necessary,
“Community-Based Operations Research” (Johnson & Smilowitz,
either to sweep in and value diverse voices, and/or to focus the
2007, p.102), that Johnson thought would communicate that this
attention of decision makers on the need for change.
work lay within the US OR tradition, while nevertheless broaden-
ing its scope in terms of both methodology and application. This For further discussions of the reasons why a more engaged ap-
paper did not reflect any substantive awareness of the then already proach is needed in light of the three conditions above, see Flood
mature UK tradition of Community OR. and Romm (1996) and Midgley (1996b).
Johnson’s attempt at branding continued with his 2012b edited In the section to follow we examine what Community OR can
volume, Community-Based Operations Research, and by that time offer to the broader OR community and discipline.
he had become aware of UK Community OR. Indeed, scholarship
within the latter tradition was amply cited in the introductory 3.4. What can Community OR offer to OR more generally?
chapter (Johnson, 2012a). However, he kept the ‘Community-Based
Operations Research’ brand, rather than adopting ‘Community OR’, Our short answer to the question ‘what can Community OR of-
because of his determination to avoid marginalization by US OR fer to OR more generally?’ is a deeper understanding of what could
practitioners who might object to the explicitly Marxist and other constitute the theory and practice of ‘engaged OR’. Here we go be-
‘progressive’ and ‘critical’ perspectives that were highly visible in yond the defining feature of Community OR, the meaningful en-
the UK Community OR literature (as well as many other aca- gagement of communities, and recognize that, for OR more gener-
demic domains within the European humanities and social sci- ally, it is stakeholders (in many cases including communities, but
ences). One of us (Gerald Midgley) has had personal experience not necessarily so) who need to be meaningfully engaged. While
with US-based OR researchers who have acknowledged a disdain practitioners developing problem structuring methods have made
within the profession for conceptions of OR that do not reflect a significant contribution that we can draw upon (e.g., Rosenhead,
Simchi-Levi’s (2009) insistence on the centrality of mathematical 1989; Rosenhead & Mingers, 2001), and so has the systems think-
modeling, the implicit valuing of ‘expert’ insights over community ing research community (e.g., Jackson, 1991, 20 0 0, 20 03; Flood
perspectives, and the privileging of theoretical developments di- and Romm, 1996; Midgley, 20 0 0, 20 03; Reynolds & Holwell, 2010),
vorced from practice over real-world applications. Community OR has arguably been a major focus of practical appli-
Acknowledging that histories of scholarship may not always cation for both these communities. It therefore represents a fasci-
convey the messiness of new thought, it is useful to note that nating ‘melting pot’ of theories, methodologies, methods and prac-
the conception of Community-Based Operations Research may be tices to inform a more general understanding of what ‘engaged OR’
better understood through the lens of Jackson’s conception of ‘en- might mean.
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However, we recognize that this is a controversial assertion. would risk being perceived by their clients as further problematiz-
You do not have to walk very far to meet a large number of ing already problematic issues? Or could it be that, in larger or-
OR practitioners who are perfectly happy to stick with the sole ganizations with substantial human capital, other departments are
use of quantitative methods and provide a problem-solving ser- already engaging with stakeholders, so the OR practitioners can
vice to clients without any significant stakeholder and/or commu- assume that their clients are already well informed about other
nity engagement. These practitioners would no doubt say that their perspectives? If the answer to either of these questions is ‘yes’,
practice is engaged, because they take seriously the idea that the then it would be entirely reasonable for OR practitioners to want
purpose of their work is to serve clients who want to make more to maintain client-only engagement, even if it’s just for their own
informed decisions, and this requires very strong engagement with self-preservation!
these clients. From our own perspective, however, this is only par- Perhaps Community OR practitioners have more influence over
tial engagement: as discussed in Section 2 of this paper, we argue problem framing and methodology choice than their colleagues in
that complex issues may have multiple problem owners, or even industry and government. This might be because they are mostly
none at all if no agencies have yet picked them up. external to their commissioning organizations and act in the role
The idea of ‘serving a client’ also assumes that the client’s of consultant-researcher; or because, when they are actually em-
framing of the issue is adequate, which may well not be the ployed by third sector organizations, the latter are more likely
case if there are stakeholders with different perspectives and no to give them leeway to choose their preferred approach. Alterna-
learning across those perspectives has yet been attempted. In- tively, the situation may be as Jackson (1987a, 1988) claims: the is-
deed, the client’s perspective may be part of the problem! This sues that Community OR practitioners address are inherently more
is why Midgley (20 0 0) always explains to those who are paying likely to require multi-stakeholder and community engagement to
for a project on a complex issue that they will not be treated resolve them. If it is indeed the case that Community and other OR
as ‘clients’ in the traditional manner: the framing of the issue practices are substantially different, then perhaps it is too much to
has to emerge from engagement with relevant stakeholders (the ask for OR practitioners more generally to learn from Community
client’s view should not be taken as given), and these stakeholders OR.
also need to participate in developing plans for action, which will While there may be some truth in the observation that there
enhance legitimacy, buy-in and the likelihood of implementation are differences between Community OR and other OR foci, we nev-
across organizational boundaries. ertheless want to stress that business and government are by no
At this point in the argument it is worth stepping back to ask means immune to facing highly complex issues characterized by
why it is that so many OR practitioners are satisfied with a prac- multiple perspectives and the need for action beyond the bound-
tice that is only client-engaged, and not engaged in any wider aries of a single client organization. Indeed, scholarship in public
sense. There are arguably three reasons. The first two assume that sector management emphasizes that citizen engagement is crucial
it is necessary for OR to be more engaged in this wider sense, to the better delivery of services (Ahn & Bretschneider, 2011). Thus,
but there are cultural and psychological barriers to overcome. The it is certainly possible for many government employees to do Com-
third reason raises the possibility that the majority of OR prac- munity OR in a credible way. It is also quite interesting to note
titioners are actually right to resist stakeholder and community that, in research to see how OR would have to be transformed to
engagement. meet the emerging challenge of environmental management, busi-
First, as we saw in the previous section, OR in the USA is ness leaders actually expressed more interest in managing stake-
still defined very narrowly in terms of the use of mathemati- holder relationships than people in the public and third sectors
cal techniques (Simchi-Levi, 20 06, 20 09; Ackermann et al., 20 09; (Midgley & Reynolds, 2001, 2004b).
Mingers, 2011a, 2011b); and in most of the rest of the world OR is In the context of complexity and multiple perspectives, engaged
broader, but the majority of practitioners are still only interested OR is clearly more effective than its less-engaged predecessor: this
in quantification (Ackermann, 2012). If all the focus is on mathe- has been argued extensively in the literature (e.g., Jackson & Keys,
matical techniques, concerns with stakeholder and community en- 1984; Jackson, 1987b; Rosenhead, 1989; Rosenhead and Mingers,
gagement will inevitably be neglected or marginalized. Mingers 2001; Ackermann, 2012) and the value of engaged OR (especially
(2011b) demonstrates, through a causal loop diagram, how ‘tradi- using problem structuring methods) has been demonstrated in
tional’ understandings of OR are continually being reinforced. multiple case studies over four decades (Mingers & Rosenhead,
Second, there is clearly an element of personal comfort in- 2004). It is also the case that even large organizations with sub-
volved: for those who have spent decades in OR and have been stantial human capital can have ‘blind spots’ and suffer ‘group-
wedded to the dominant paradigm, it is a daunting prospect to ac- think’ (Janis, 1982), so taking the client’s perspective for granted
cept that there is now a need to learn a whole new set of theories, and failing to engage more widely can be problematic (Munday,
methodologies and practices (Brocklesby, 1995, 1997; Mingers & 2015).
Brocklesby, 1996, 1997; Midgley, 20 0 0; Midgley, Nicholson, & Bren- In some ways, this whole issue of whether ‘mainstream’ OR can
nan, 2016). It means the possibility of senior OR practitioners be- learn from Community OR boils down to our normative vision of
ing seen as novices in some respects, and this can make them feel OR: do we just see ourselves as offering a research service to man-
vulnerable. agement, primarily tackling ‘tame’ (complicated but uncontrover-
However, what if the majority of practitioners are actually right sial) problems, or should we be able to address the full range of
to resist learning about the theory and practice of engagement issues facing organizations, communities and societies, including
coming from Community OR? The third possible reason why many the ‘wicked’ (complex, multi-stakeholder, difficult to resolve) prob-
practitioners are satisfied with client-only engagement and the lems identified by Rittel and Webber (1973)? If we want a more
sole use of quantitative methods is that this works for them. We multi-talented OR, and (following Ackoff, 1979a, 1979b) we suggest
have to consider the possibility that the contexts of much ‘main- this is essential if our discipline is to have a future in an increas-
stream’ OR and Community OR are so dissimilar that they require ingly complex and interconnected world, then we need the theo-
different skill sets. ries, methodologies, methods and practices of engaged OR. Com-
The historical place of much OR has been within public and munity OR practitioners can help the wider discipline understand
private sector organizations, with practitioners offering a problem- what this might involve.
solving service to managers. Could it be that, in such a role, if Perhaps the clinching argument, for us, is that understanding
OR practitioners were to insist on stakeholder engagement, they whether a particular focal issue for an OR project requires stake-
780 G. Midgley et al. / European Journal of Operational Research 268 (2018) 771–783

holder engagement is not a simple matter. To find out whether indeed community-engaged practice can take place within public,
an issue requires engaged OR actually requires engagement! Let private and third sector OR.
us explain. Early arguments for the complementarity of differ- Importantly, this new definition does not marginalize any pa-
ent kinds of OR techniques focused on the alignment of different pers or projects that have previously been described as Community
types of method with different contexts of application: optimiza- OR, thus alienating sections of our research community: we argue
tion and other mathematical techniques were said to be appro- that the meaningful engagement of communities is a principle of
priate for relatively simple problems where there is agreement on practice that has been tacitly present all along, and making it ex-
what the problem is, while problem structuring methods are more plicit provides a new coherence for Community OR. Nevertheless,
appropriate for complex problems characterized by disagreement it has implications for addressing some of the controversies in our
between stakeholders (Jackson & Keys, 1984; Jackson, 1987b, 1990, research community, and we have shown how it helps us take a
1991; Keys, 1988). We suggest that there is an element of truth position on four of these.
to this way of thinking, but on its own it is inadequate: how do One of these positions concerns what Community OR can of-
we know if the problem is a relatively simple one that is agreed fer to OR more generally. We suggest that it can offer a deeper
between stakeholders if we don’t ask them? Thus, any framework understanding of what constitutes ‘engaged OR’. Community OR is
that is designed to support practitioners in choosing OR methods, uniquely placed for this because it has been a focus of application
regardless of all the caveats built around it to encourage critical for problem structuring researchers, systems thinkers and action
thinking (e.g., Jackson, 1990), is only as good as the exploratory researchers as well as more traditional quantitative OR practition-
approach adopted to diagnose the context (Ulrich, 1993; Midgley, ers, and thus it represents a ‘melting pot’ of theories, methodolo-
20 0 0). Simply asking the client is not enough, as he or she may gies, methods and practices from which new understandings of en-
have blind spots. Thus, an initial period of stakeholder-engaged in- gaged OR can emerge.
vestigation is needed prior to choosing the main problem solving
or problem structuring methods to be used. This is precisely what Acknowledgment
the theory and practice of boundary critique is all about, as dis-
cussed in Section 3.2 (and also see the following references, which Gerald Midgley’s participation in writing this paper was part-
include those before 1998 when the term ‘boundary critique’ was funded by the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)
first used as a label for this body of work: Ulrich, 1983, 1987; and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) through
Midgley, 1992, 20 0 0; Midgley et al., 1998; Foote et al., 2007; Midg- project NE/L014211/1 under the Resource Recovery from Waste
ley & Pinzón, 2011). It involves “probing” the features of the issue theme.
in focus (Ufua et al., 2018) and revisiting exploration periodically
throughout an intervention if/when new dimensions of the issue Supplementary materials
are uncovered (Córdoba & Midgley, 2006). The extent of bound-
ary critique needed prior to the choice of methods partly depends Supplementary material associated with this article can be
on the time and resources available, but at least a modicum of found, in the online version, at doi:10.1016/j.ejor.2017.08.014. This
stakeholder and/or community engagement is always required if contains our reflections on how to define OR, plus our rationale
the blind spots of those initially constructing the remit of a project for focusing on intervention and modeling as the two characteris-
are to be exposed. tics that Community OR has inherited from its parent discipline.
Hence our conclusion is that the kind of engaged OR that has
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