Harvard Business Review -- On ManagementReview by: S. J. MorrisonThe Journal of the Operational Research Society, Vol. 29, No. 1 (Jan., 1978), p. 93Published by: Palgrave Macmillan Journals on behalf of the Operational Research SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3009418 .

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Book Selection

Federal agencies concerned with water use. To say that this condemns modelling in this context would be wrong as this failure of the model-builder to gain the acceptance of the decision-maker is universal.

Even though the price is high at just over $20 I can thoroughly recommend this book to those involved in modelling and evaluating natural resources. It would also be enlightening reading for many of my colleagues who have forgotten what OR is and have turned into nothing more than mathematical optimization technicians.

N. R. HOLMES

Harvard Business Review-on Management

VARIOUS AUTHORS

Heinemann, London, 1975. 751 pp. ?7.50.

Readers who follow developments on the other side of the Atlantic will be aware that our sister Society is celebrating the 25th anniversary of its founding, and may have noted reviews of three respected founder members Ackoff, Koopman and Morse on the future of OR. With a change of emphasis from technical problems to strategic problems at national and international levels, human and political factors enter into the decision process to a greater degree and so OR is becoming a social science in the broadest sense. The broadening of the OR horizon envisaged by Ackoff, Koopman and Morse should embrace Management along with many other aspects of social science and this book, from an important American source, is relevant in that context.

The book is a well-chosen collection of 39 essays on a broad spectrum of management topics, with an extensive, bibliographic, readers' guide which virtually constitutes the fortieth essay. Its importance to OR can best be measured as an inverse relationship with the number of direct references to the subject there are only two specific references to Operations Research, as such, out of an index of about one thousand items and one of these is not particularly flattering to the subject (p. 74 .... many in management feel that quantitative people are themselves poor communicators, and that they tend to get bogged down in their own techniques-they can't see the managerial forest because of all the decision trees"). This should be taken not as a criticism of the book but as a challenge to OR to get on better terms with Management. The OR scientist who wishes to take up a serious study of Management could do very much worse than use this book as a starting point for his exploration.

S. J. MORRISON

93

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