Behavioral operations research

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Behavioral operations research (often called behavioral operations) examines and takes into consideration human behaviors and emotions when facing complex decision problems. [1] It relates to the behavioral aspects of the use of operations research and operations management. In particular, it focuses on understanding behavior in, with and beyond models. [2] The general purpose is to make better use and improve the use of operations theories and practice, so that the benefits received from the potential improvements to operations approaches in practice, that arise from recent findings in behavioral sciences, are realized. [3] Behavioral operations approaches have heavily influenced supply chain management research [4] among others.

Contents

Overview

Operations research involves a wide range of problem–solving skills aiming to help individuals or organizations to make more rational decisions as well as improving their efficiency. [5] However, operations research often assumes that agents involved in the process or operating system, such as employees, consumers and suppliers, make fully rational decisions. Their decisions are not affected by their emotions as well as their surroundings and that they are able to react and distinguish between different types of information.[ citation needed ] In reality, this is not always true; human behavior has an important role in decision making and worker motivation, and therefore should be considered in the study of operations. This has led to the rise of behavioral operations research, which is defined as the study of impacts that human behavior has on operations, design and business interactions in different organizations. [6] Behavioral operations research aims to understand the decision making of managers and tries to make improvements to the supply chain using the insight obtained. Behavioral operations research includes knowledge from a number of fields, such as economics, behavioral science, psychology and other social sciences. Traditional operations research and behavioral operations research have a common intellectual goal, aiming to make differences in operations outcomes, such as flexibility, efficiency and productivity. [7]

Theoretical influence

Humans have limitations in their ability to collect and react to relevant information. When a decision or conclusion has to be made through complex information, human decision-makers often fail to comply with normative decision theories. Moreover, a person's lifestyle, social interactions and collective behaviors have a clear influence on their decisions. [7]

The breakdown of cognitive psychology study which refers to the study of human mental processes and their role in thinking,feeling and behaving CognitivePsychology.svg
The breakdown of cognitive psychology study which refers to the study of human mental processes and their role in thinking,feeling and behaving

Cognitive psychology

This is a relatively new branch of psychology which focuses on humans' ability to make decisions, solve problems, learning, attention, memory and forgetting. These are only a few of the practical applications of this science, to some extent it is also related to motivation and emotion. [8] Cognitive psychology is interested in what is happening within the mind when new information is received, how people respond to this information, and how this response affects their behavior and emotions. [9] Cognitive psychology is considered to be one of the dominant theoretical force in behavioral science. [10]

Social psychology

The Asch experiment shows that participants tend to adhere to the group norms Asch experiment.png
The Asch experiment shows that participants tend to adhere to the group norms

People often react and behave differently when they are put into different social situations. The aim of social psychology is to understand the nature and causes of individual behaviors. [11] It questions or provides an insight of how human behavior relies on the physical environment. [12] Social psychology theories attempt to explain why there are competition between individuals, why it is often the case that individuals or organisations seek to protect and maintain their status, and why it has been observed that individuals and organisations are willing to sacrifice efficiency to achieve their goal of staying at a higher hierarchical position. In addition to status, social psychology also includes people's behavior towards goal setting, feedback and controls, interdependence, and reciprocity. [7]

Organizational behavior

The use of psychology in behavioral operations research links to the idea of judging the relationship between people's mental health and wellbeing and their behavior at work. Psychology experts often set up indicators to evaluate how an employee's surroundings, such as working environment and noise, can affect their productivity. [13] Organizational behavior is the study of ways people react or behave when they are organized in groups. The purpose of these studies is to improve business productivity, trying to create a more efficient business organization. Organizational behavior theories are applied towards human resource trying to maximize the output from individual group members. The study of organization behavior can be broken down into different sections, including personality, job satisfaction and reward management, leadership, authority, power and politics. [14]

Main streams of research

There are four main streams of research that can be considered a part of behavior operations research. These give us an idea of the weakness of the current operations research model and the effectiveness of behavioral operations research in predicting human decisions and reactions when facing different situations. [6]

Socio-technical view of technology management

Physical technologies can be defined as a socio-technology system, which consists of humans, human activity, spaces, artifacts, tools, and communications media. This theory suggests that social interaction at the workplace is determined by the technology and techniques used at work. Therefore, a change in technology used at work can lead to unexpected consequences. This may include differences in motivation. [6]

Human factor engineering

Human factor engineering can be applied to improve workplaces, working systems and products aiming to reduce human errors during operations as well as improving human efficiency, productivity and operational performance. It often involves improvements of large machineries to reduce accidents during work. It is believed that behavior operations research can be related to human factor engineering as systematic errors, which happens very often technology and different machineries, can affect people's decision making and their interaction with the operating system. [15]

Visualisation of the bullwhip effect Bulwhip efect.jpg
Visualisation of the bullwhip effect

The bullwhip effect

The bullwhip effect happens along the supply chain of an organisation. This is when agents along the supply chain fail to pass on relevant and accurate information to their superior, leading to a large variation in the demand of goods and services from the customers and the supply from the organisation. [16] Human behavior is a very important aspect to be considered, as decision making and emotions in the market will make a big difference to the final result of the bullwhip effect. This is because managers who can calmly make decisions while others competitors panic and deliver inaccurate messages often perform better within the industry. When the market is in poor condition, fear can be an important factor affecting managers' decisions. Therefore, human behavior is closely related to people's decisions. [17]

System dynamics models in operations contexts

System dynamics models in operations contexts focuses on the importance of how components in a system interact with each other as well as providing an overview of the processes that takes place within the system. Behavioral operations research often benefits from the development of comprehensive systems models as they are able to analyse and provide an insight of the operational system. This allows the study of behavioral operations to understand how people in these settings or work conditions think about the context in which they operate. In an operations system, it often involves levers for managers to manipulate the components involved in the system. The uses of these levers are determined by human behaviors and these behaviors include feelings of stress and fear. [18]

Newsvendor problem

The newsvendor model (or newsboy or single-period or perishable) is a mathematical model used in operations management and applied economics to determine optimal level products or services to keep in stock when the demand is unknown. This model is also known as the newsvendor problem by analogy with the situation faced by a newspaper vendor who must make on time stocking decision of how many copies of newspaper to keep in stock when facing uncertain demand. If the newspaper vendor stocks too much, these newspaper may end up worthless by the end of the day as they are no longer up-to-date. However, if the newspaper vendor stocks too little, he misses the opportunity to make more profit and suffers loss of goodwill. [19]

Heuristic performance regarding the secretary problem - Expected success probabilities for three heuristics SecretaryProblemHeuristicPlot.png
Heuristic performance regarding the secretary problem – Expected success probabilities for three heuristics

Assignment problem

The assignment problem is a complex optimization problem. The problem involves number of agents and a number of tasks. The purpose is to assign each agent with a task. All agents are expected or aimed to be allocated in a way that will maximize productivity and efficiency and minimize the total cost of the assignment.

Secretary problem

The secretary problem can also be called the optimal stopping theory. It focuses heavily on applied probability, statistics and decision theory. The idea behind the secretary problem is that to make the best decisions when there is a pool of different options, other options are unknown, details of other options will only be given if the currently existing option is given up. The problem comes down to the idea of optimal strategy, maximizing the probability of selecting the best option.

Related Research Articles

Cognitive science Interdisciplinary scientific study of the mind and its processes

Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary, scientific study of the mind and its processes. It examines the nature, the tasks, and the functions of cognition. Cognitive scientists study intelligence and behavior, with a focus on how nervous systems represent, process, and transform information. Mental faculties of concern to cognitive scientists include language, perception, memory, attention, reasoning, and emotion; to understand these faculties, cognitive scientists borrow from fields such as linguistics, psychology, artificial intelligence, philosophy, neuroscience, and anthropology. The typical analysis of cognitive science spans many levels of organization, from learning and decision to logic and planning; from neural circuitry to modular brain organization. The fundamental concept of cognitive science is that "thinking can best be understood in terms of representational structures in the mind and computational procedures that operate on those structures."

Emotions are biological states associated with the nervous system brought on by neurophysiological changes variously associated with thoughts, feelings, behavioural responses, and a degree of pleasure or displeasure. There is currently no scientific consensus on a definition. Emotion is often intertwined with mood, temperament, personality, disposition, creativity and motivation.

Herbert A. Simon American political scientist, economist, sociologist, and psychologist

Herbert Alexander Simon was an American economist, political scientist and cognitive psychologist, whose primary research interest was decision-making within organizations and is best known for the theories of "bounded rationality" and "satisficing". He received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1978 and the Turing Award in 1975. His research was noted for its interdisciplinary nature and spanned across the fields of cognitive science, computer science, public administration, management, and political science. He was at Carnegie Mellon University for most of his career, from 1949 to 2001.

Industrial and organizational psychology, which is also known as occupational psychology, organizational psychology, or work and organizational psychology; is an applied discipline within psychology. It is abbreviated various ways, including IO psychology, I–O psychology, I/O psych, IOP, etc. The discipline is the science of human behavior relating to work and applies psychological theories and principles to organizations and individuals in their places of work as well as the individual's work-life more generally. IO psychologists are trained in the scientist–practitioner model. They contribute to an organization's success by improving the performance, motivation, job satisfaction, and occupational safety and health as well as the overall health and well-being of its employees. An IO psychologist conducts research on employee behaviors and attitudes, and how these can be improved through hiring practices, training programs, feedback, and management systems. Industrial, work and organizational psychology is a broader term for the overall field.

A cognitive bias is a systematic pattern of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment. Individuals create their own "subjective reality" from their perception of the input. An individual's construction of reality, not the objective input, may dictate their behavior in the world. Thus, cognitive biases may sometimes lead to perceptual distortion, inaccurate judgment, illogical interpretation, or what is broadly called irrationality.

Bounded rationality is the idea that rationality is limited, when individuals make decisions, by the tractability of the decision problem, the cognitive limitations of the mind, and the time available to make the decision. Decision-makers, in this view, act as satisficers, seeking a satisfactory solution rather than an optimal one.

Sociotechnical systems (STS) in organizational development is an approach to complex organizational work design that recognizes the interaction between people and technology in workplaces. The term also refers to the interaction between society's complex infrastructures and human behaviour. In this sense, society itself, and most of its substructures, are complex sociotechnical systems. The term sociotechnical systems was coined by Eric Trist, Ken Bamforth and Fred Emery, in the World War II era, based on their work with workers in English coal mines at the Tavistock Institute in London.

Decision-making Cognitive process resulting in choosing a course of action

In psychology, decision-making is regarded as the cognitive process resulting in the selection of a belief or a course of action among several alternative possibilities. Decision-making is the process of identifying and choosing alternatives based on the values, preferences and beliefs of the decision-maker. Every decision-making process produces a final choice, which may or may not prompt action.

Applied psychology is the use of psychological methods and findings of scientific psychology to solve practical problems of human and animal behavior and experience. Mental health, organizational psychology, business management, education, health, product design, ergonomics, and law are just a few of the areas that have been influenced by the application of psychological principles and findings. Some of the areas of applied psychology include clinical psychology, counseling psychology, evolutionary psychology, industrial and organizational psychology, legal psychology, neuropsychology, occupational health psychology, human factors, forensic psychology, engineering psychology, school psychology, sports psychology, traffic psychology, community psychology, and medical psychology. In addition, a number of specialized areas in the general field of psychology have applied branches. However, the lines between sub-branch specializations and major applied psychology categories are often blurred. For example, a human factors psychologist might use a cognitive psychology theory. This could be described as human factor psychology or as applied cognitive psychology.

Job satisfaction or employee satisfaction is a measure of workers' contentedness with their job, whether or not they like the job or individual aspects or facets of jobs, such as nature of work or supervision. Job satisfaction can be measured in cognitive (evaluative), affective, and behavioral components. Researchers have also noted that job satisfaction measures vary in the extent to which they measure feelings about the job. or cognitions about the job.

Sympathy is the perception, understanding, and reaction to the distress or need of another life form. This sympathetic concern is driven by a switch in viewpoint from a personal perspective to the perspective of another group or individual who is in need. David Hume explained that this is the case because "the minds of all men are similar in their feelings and operations" and that "the motion of one communicates itself to the rest" so that as affectations readily pass from one to another, they beget corresponding movements.

Organizational behavior (OB) or organisational behaviour is the: "study of human behavior in organizational settings, the interface between human behavior and the organization, and the organization itself". OB research can be categorized in at least three ways:

Outline of thought Overview of and topical guide to thought

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to thought (thinking):

In psychology, the human mind is considered to be a cognitive miser due to the tendency of people to think and solve problems in simpler and less effortful ways rather than in more sophisticated and more effortful ways, regardless of intelligence. Just as a miser seeks to avoid spending money, the human mind often seeks to avoid spending cognitive effort. The cognitive miser theory is an umbrella theory of cognition that brings together previous research on heuristics and attributional biases to explain how and why people are cognitive misers.

Organizational ethics is the ethics of an organization, and it is how an organization responds to an internal or external stimulus. Organizational ethics is interdependent with the organizational culture. Although it is akin to both organizational behavior and industrial and organizational psychology as well as business ethics on the micro and macro levels, organizational ethics is neither organizational behavior nor industrial and organizational psychology, nor is it solely business ethics. Organizational ethics express the values of an organization to its employees and/or other entities irrespective of governmental and/or regulatory laws.

Some of the research that is conducted in the field of psychology is more "fundamental" than the research conducted in the applied psychological disciplines, and does not necessarily have a direct application. The subdisciplines within psychology that can be thought to reflect a basic-science orientation include biological psychology, cognitive psychology, neuropsychology, and so on. Research in these subdisciplines is characterized by methodological rigor. The concern of psychology as a basic science is in understanding the laws and processes that underlie behavior, cognition, and emotion. Psychology as a basic science provides a foundation for applied psychology. Applied psychology, by contrast, involves the application of psychological principles and theories yielded up by the basic psychological sciences; these applications are aimed at overcoming problems or promoting well-being in areas such as mental and physical health and education.

Psychology encompasses a vast domain, and includes many different approaches to the study of mental processes and behavior. Below are the major areas of inquiry that taken together constitute psychology. A comprehensive list of the sub-fields and areas within psychology can be found at the list of psychology topics and list of psychology disciplines.

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to social science:

Bullying is abusive social interaction between peers can include aggression, harassment, and violence. Bullying is typically repetitive and enacted by those who are in a position of power over the victim. A growing body of research illustrates a significant relationship between bullying and emotional intelligence.

Cognitive assets are tangible and intangible organizational assets that constitute sources of the cognition that is necessary for action coordination. These assets allow for the integrity and efficiency of the multiple conversions of individual knowledge into organizational knowledge.

References

  1. ↑ Donohue, K.; Özer, Ö; Zheng, Y. (2020). "Behavioral operations: Past, present, and future". Manufacturing & Service Operations Management. 22 (1): 191–202. doi:10.1287/msom.2019.0828.
  2. ↑ Behavioral operational research : theory, methodology and practice. Kunc, Martin,, Malpass, Jonathan,, White, Leroy. [London]: Palgrave Macmillan. 2016. ISBN   9781137535511. OCLC   952973172.CS1 maint: others (link)
  3. ↑ "Behavioural Operational Research (BOR)". bor.aalto.fi. Retrieved 2015-11-01.
  4. ↑ Schorsch, Timm; Wallenburg, Carl Marcus; Wieland, Andreas (2017). "The human factor in SCM" (PDF). International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management. 47 (4): 238–262. doi:10.1108/IJPDLM-10-2015-0268.
  5. ↑ "What is Operations Research?". Informs. Informs.org. Retrieved 25 October 2015.
  6. 1 2 3 Gino, Francesca; Pisano, Gary (2008-03-11). "Toward a Theory of Behavioral Operations". Manufacturing & Service Operations Management. 10 (4): 676–691. doi:10.1287/msom.1070.0205. ISSN   1523-4614.
  7. 1 2 3 Bendoly, Elliot; Eckerd, Stephanie (2010). "Behavioral Operations". Scholarpedia. 5 (3): 10422. Bibcode:2010SchpJ...510422E. doi:10.4249/scholarpedia.10422.
  8. ↑ "Cognitive Psychology: The Science of How We Think". About.com Education. Retrieved 2015-10-31.
  9. ↑ "What is Cognitive Psychology? - Definition & Theories - Video & Lesson Transcript | Study.com". Study.com. Retrieved 2015-11-01.
  10. ↑ Alan, Lesgold (1977). Cognitive psychology and instruction. New York: Plenum Press, in coordination with NATO Scientific Affairs Division. p. 495.
  11. ↑ McLeod, Saul (2007). "Social Psychology". SimplyPsychology. Archived from the original on 2011-02-12. Retrieved 25 October 2015.
  12. ↑ Argyle, M., Collett, P. and Furnham, A. (1995). Social psychology at work. London: Routledge, p.271.
  13. ↑ "What Is the Role of Psychology in Organizational Behavior?". wiseGEEK. Retrieved 2015-11-01.
  14. ↑ "Organizational Behavior (OB) Definition | Investopedia". Investopedia. Retrieved 2015-11-01.
  15. ↑ "Human factors engineering in projects" (PDF). International Association of Oil & Gas Producers. 454. August 2011. Archived from the original (PDF) on 5 March 2016. Retrieved 25 October 2015.
  16. ↑ "The Bullwhip Effect". www.quickmba.com. Retrieved 2015-11-01.
  17. ↑ "The Bullwhip Effect and Your Supply Chain". Entrepreneur. 2014-04-15. Retrieved 2015-11-01.
  18. ↑ Bendoly, Elliot; van Wezel, Wout; Banchrach, Daniel G. (25 June 2015). The Handbook of Behavioral Operations Management: Social and Psychological Dynamics in Production and Service Settings. United States: Oxford University Press. pp. 6–8. ISBN   978-0199357222.
  19. ↑ Adelman, Dan; Barnes-Schuster, Dawn; Eisenstein, Don (1999). "The Newsvendor Model". The Operations Quadrangle: Business Process Fundamentals.
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