Community Operational Research

Abstract

All of the examples of systemic intervention I will present in this third section of the book come from my own Community Operational Research practice (‘Community OR’ for short). To give a very broad definition, Community OR is intervention in the service of community development: working for improvement by dealing with issues that have a perceived negative effect on either the whole of, or sections of, local communities. As Community OR is a child of the wider Operational Research (OR) movement, most Community OR practitioners draw on OR and management systems methods—although (unsurprisingly, given the subject matter of this book) I argue that well developed methods are not enough on their own to enable someone to undertake Community OR in a satisfactory manner: Community OR needs to be a systemic intervention practice if agents wish to minimise the occurrence of unforeseen consequences of intervention. Boundary critique is essential to enable agents to reflect on the complexities of the issues they are trying to deal with, including different views surfaced by multiple stakeholders (see Chapter 7 for more details). Flexibility in the use of methods is also important, as complex twists and turns are often experienced during Community OR interventions, where new and unexpected dimensions to issues can be surfaced and have to be addressed in an on-going manner (see Chapters 9-11 for the arguments in favour of a pluralistic use of methods).