Four Views on Problem Structuring

Over the last year or so, we have been attempting to carry out naive research on OR/MS groups. We were a little concerned that though most educational programs do (in the United Kingdom at least) attempt to teach problem structuring, most of this effort was based on little or no systematic knowledge. That is, there seems to be a dearth of empirical research from which lessons could be learned. We found quite a few of the grand old men of OR reflecting on their own experience, but little or no comparative examination of current practice. So we decided to go out and look to see if a rigorous study would be feasible and worthwhile.

In addition to our empirical work, we took the time to search through the OR/MS literature to see what could be found therein. The product of that search is reported more fully in another paper [Woolley, R. N., M. Pidd. 1978. Problem structuring in operational research: A review of the literature. Working Paper No. 111, University of Aston Management Centre.]. We thought that readers of Interfaces might be interested in seeing the pattern which we found emerging from the literature.