Operational Research: Methods and Applications

Throughout its history, Operational Research has evolved to include a variety of methods, models and algorithms that have been applied to a diverse and wide range of contexts. This encyclopedic article consists of two main sections: methods and applications. The first aims to summarise the up-to-date knowledge and provide an overview of the state-of-the-art methods and key developments in the various subdomains of the field. The second offers a wide-ranging list of areas where Operational Research has been applied. The article is meant to be read in a nonlinear fashion. It should be used as a point of reference or first-port-of-call for a diverse pool of readers: academics, researchers, students, and practitioners. The entries within the methods and applications sections are presented in alphabetical order. The authors dedicate this paper to the 2023 Turkey/Syria earthquake victims. We sincerely hope that advances in OR will play a role towards minimising the pain and suffering caused by this and future catastrophes

Operational research:methods and applications

Throughout its history, Operational Research has evolved to include a variety of methods, models and algorithms that have been applied to a diverse and wide range of contexts. This encyclopedic article consists of two main sections: methods and applications. The first aims to summarise the up-to-date knowledge and provide an overview of the state-of-the-art methods and key developments in the various subdomains of the field. The second offers a wide-ranging list of areas where Operational Research has been applied. The article is meant to be read in a nonlinear fashion. It should be used as a point of reference or first-port-of-call for a diverse pool of readers: academics, researchers, students, and practitioners. The entries within the methods and applications sections are presented in alphabetical order

The conception of New Venture Ideas by novice entrepreneurs: A question of nature or nurture?

This research aims to further understanding around the cognitive mechanisms lying behind the generation of entrepreneurial New Venture Ideas (NVIs). It assesses the extent to which this competency is innate or one which is capable of being proactively developed. This has particular salience in the context of novice entrepreneurs, a group lacking the knowledge corridors and cognitive frameworks of their serial or portfolio counterparts. Innovative in nature, NVIs represent the first candidate concepts for new means-end relationships. Existing as cognitive products at the very start of the entrepreneurial journey, significant academic attention has focused on the cognitive micro-foundations that influence their conception. Nonetheless, notable gaps in this body of work remain, not least in how different cognitive antecedents impact upon NVI quality. This thesis looks at these issues through three independent but inter-related studies. The first undertakes a systematic literature review of the existing empirical research to elucidate the extent, and associated transmission methods, through which entrepreneurship education and training (EET) supports opportunity identification. The second takes a quantitative approach to observe how an individual’s innate cognitive capabilities, notably those aspects of intelligence related to executive functioning, explain significant inter-person performance differences when it comes to entrepreneurial ideation. The third adopts an experimental methodology, to assess the extent to which the use of cognitive heuristics, in this case analogical reasoning, impacts on performance outcomes in the conception of NVIs, and the extent to which it can be supported. Collectively this study finds that EET interventions, innate cognitive capabilities, and cognitive heuristics all contribute to NVI quality. It highlights the potency of nurturing interventions but simultaneously illustrates their limitations. With different cognitive antecedents shown to exude varying degrees of malleability, this research has relevance to both the structure, and expectations, of EET programmes dedicated to the ‘fuzzy front’ end of entrepreneurship

Customer preferences with regard to milk packaging

The milk industry in the Eastern Cape is very competitive and milk suppliers must use all means, including packaging, to influence buying behaviour. The aim of the study was to investigate customer preferences with regard to milk packaging in the Nelson Mandela Bay (NMB) area. The purpose was to develop a better understanding of customer preferences so that packaging could be designed to satisfy customer expectations and needs. The research design was based on a quantitative approach (non-experimental) and the study was descriptive in nature. The measuring instrument was a self-developed questionnaire, which was developed based on the literature study and previous empirical studies conducted by Adam and Ali (2014a) and Ahmed, Pumar and Amin (2014). The sample consisted of 199 adult shoppers in the Nelson Mandela Bay area, selected through snowball and quota sampling. Data was collected with the help of fieldworkers, coded into Microsoft Excel and processed with statistical software. Descriptive statistics and canonical correlation analysis were used to identify customer preferences and relationships between the different dimensions of milk packaging. The results revealed that size, materials, convenience in handing and product information (expiry date) were important. Colour and design were not regarded as important by the target group

LIPIcs, Volume 244, ESA 2022, Complete Volume

LIPIcs, Volume 244, ESA 2022, Complete Volum