Understanding Soft Operations Research: The Methods, their Application and its Future in the Defence Setting.

摘要

This paper seeks to understand soft operations research (OR) - the distinctions between it and hard OR, its methods and their application, particularly in the Defence setting. To achieve this a detailed examination of selected soft OR methods is presented, followed by a literature review documenting applications of these methodologies in the Defence setting, and the development of a preliminary framework to guide application of the methods. The paper concludes with an examination of the way forward for soft OR in the Defence setting, recommending support for soft OR's use in future projects, either singularly or in combination with hard OR methods; and the development of a framework for incorporating soft OR in% current military operations research.