Supporting strategy : a survey of UK OR/MS practitioners

This paper reports the results of an on-line survey conducted with practitioner members of the UK Operational Research (OR) Society. The purpose of the survey was to explore the current practice of supporting strategy in terms of activities supported and tools used. The results of the survey are compared to those of previous surveys to explore developments in, inter-alia, the use of management/strategy tools and „soft‟ Operational Research / Management Science (OR/MS) tools. The survey results demonstrate that OR practitioners actively support strategy within their organisations. Whilst a wide variety of tools, drawn from the OR/MS and management / strategy fields are used to support strategy within organisations, the findings suggest that soft OR/MS tools are not regularly used. The findings also demonstrate that tools are combined to support strategy from both within and across the OR/MS and management / strategy fields. The paper ends by identifying a number of areas for further research

European Survey Data on Attitudes to Equality and Human Rights Technical Paper. Research Series

This report maps the data available on attitudes to equality and human rights issues in Ireland collected in European surveys over the period 2000 to 2018. These surveys provide a rich source of evidence for researchers and policymakers in Ireland. We identify a total of 1,509 relevant questions from a search of over 125 attitude surveys. These questions are categorised according to the groups and topics addressed. We find that attitudes towards minority ethnic/nationality groups, gender/gender roles and social welfare recipients are the most widely covered. Questions on attitudes towards religious minorities, age groups/ageism, family status, disability and sexual orientation are much less common. Moreover, while the frequency of attitude questions relating to sexual orientation has increased over the period, questions on age and disability groups have declined. Within these equality groups the surveys cover a range of topics including social distance, social contact, tolerance and policy preferences

The physical chemistry of enzyme actions

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston Universit

An activity analysis of a non-nurse administrative assistant to a nursing supervisor on one ward unit.

Thesis (M.S.)--Boston Universit

Two approaches to Staphylococcus aureus typing

Typing of Staphylococcus aureus is carried out to detect outbreaks, monitor transmission and infer virulence and resistance properties. There are now many different extant typing methods. This article summarises the broad classes of typing approaches and describes two methods. One is based on micro-array technology while the other is based upon the interrogation of polymorphic sites using real-time PCR

The development and use of tools to support the strategy process

This document presents a collection of peer reviewed journal articles, book chapters and books which together form the submission for PhD by published work. The document demonstrates that the collection submitted forms a significant contribution to knowledge primarily to the field of operational research (OR) and strategy. The contribution covers four key areas: the practice of tool use by practitioners to support the strategy process and one of its particular activities (visioning); the development and application of two specific tools (visioning and scenario planning); the support of the strategy process through tool use; and, teaching the subject of OR and strategy

The Use of Scenarios in Developing Strategy: An Analysis of Conversation and Video Data

Surveys of managers report that strategy tools such as scenarios are widely used in practice. However, such surveys of practice typically focus on reporting which tools are used, rather than exploring how they are actually used. This paper examines the use of scenarios as a tool to support strategy development. We highlight a number of roles (technical, analytical and social) that scenarios play in strategy exercises, and offer insights into the use of scenarios in practice, illustrating that they are used throughout the strategy development process rather than simply at the start. Our approach to data analysis, based on analyses of both audio and visual material from a strategy workshop, sheds light on enhanced approaches to coding both conversation and video data within strategy research

Serialisation and the use of Twitter:Keeping the conversation alive in public policy scenario projects

Scenario planning projects have been used in a variety of organisational settings to explore future uncertainty. The scenario process is often a participative one involving heterogeneous stakeholder groups from multiple organisations, particularly when exploring issues of wider public concern. Facilitated workshops are a common setting for scenario projects, typically requiring people to be physically present in order to participate and engage with others for the duration of the project. During workshops, participants progress through the stages of the process, generating content relevant to each stage and ultimately the scenarios themselves. However, the periods between workshops and other episodes of activity (e.g. interviewing stakeholders) are rarely mentioned in such accounts. Thus we know very little about what activities take place between such activities, when they occur and who is involved. This is a particular issue for larger scale scenario projects that run over a period of weeks or months and involve multiple workshops; in such cases organisers and facilitators have to consider how to maintain the interest and levels of engagement of participants throughout the duration of the project. A variety of social media exist which allow people to interact with each other virtually, both in real time and asynchronously. We reflect on the use of social media within a project to develop scenarios for the future of the food system around Birmingham, UK, in the year 2050. We explore how a particular social media, namely Twitter, can be used effectively as part of a scenario planning project, for example to engage participants and encourage contributions to the project. We suggest that Twitter can support the serialisation of strategic conversations between the face-to-face workshops. The paper considers the implications of these reflections for both the scenario process and scenario projects more generally