This paper is an inquiry into the nature and characteristics of the so-called soft approaches in Operational Research (OR). After a first outline of soft approaches, six wellknown and widely applied soft approaches are selected for further study and characterisation applying a multi-dimensional framework. In addition, some reflexions about the limitations of such a framework are discussed.

This feature cluster of the European Journal of Operational Research is one of three special issues devoted to results from the Sixteenth International Conference on Multi-Criteria Decision Making held at Semmering, Austria, on February 18–22, 2002. The special issue of the Journal of MultiCriteria Decision Making edited by Matthias Ehrgott and Mikulas Luptacik will focus on application-oriente...

Although the importance of the external IT environment has been recognized in the literature, there has been little effort to conceptualize the theoretical dimensions of this construct and develop operational indicators to measure it. Our research addresses this gap and seeks to develop the theoretical dimensions and operational measures for external IT environment and empirically validate them...

Firms make large investments in enterprise IT systems expecting positive impacts to their supply chain operations. Yet, though systems facilitate the responsibilities of multiple stakeholders, their success is not determined merely by its adoption. This study shows how management innovation is developed to affect operational agility of a firm. The model suggests that operational agility in supp...

In a paper by Chang [D.Y. Chang, Applications of the extent analysis method on fuzzy AHP, European Journal of Operational Research 95 (1996) 649–655], an extent analysis method on fuzzy AHP was proposed to obtain a crisp priority vector from a triangular fuzzy comparison matrix. It is found that the extent analysis method cannot estimate the true weights from a fuzzy comparison matrix and has l...

That psychologists conduct sound research is important whatever their research areas, but it is especially important when the results of this research have a substantial impact on people’s lives. This is the case for intervention research, the findings of which may influence the type of treatments people receive. Sound intervention research is critical for determining what treatments are benefi...

Forestry has contributed many problems to the Operations Research (OR) community. At the same time, OR has developed many models and solution methods for use in forestry. In this article, we describe the current status of research on the application of OR methods to forestry and a number of research challenges or open questions that we believe will be of interest to both researchers and practit...

In this paper we provide a finite set of candidates to be one of the endpoints of an optimal rapid transit line for the problem of locating simultaneously a service facility and a rapid transit line. & 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.