Spontaneous emergence of Community OR: Self-initiating, self-organising problem structuring mediated by social media

Mike Yearworth and Leroy White

European Journal of Operational Research, 2018, vol. 268, issue 3, 809-824

Abstract: We develop a new constitutive definition of Community OR as a self-initiating, self-organising community actor network emerging spontaneously in response to a triggering event and showing evidence of non-codified OR behaviours leading to action to improve the problem situation. From this new definition we have re-conceptualised Community OR as a construct that can be empirically observed emerging from suitable behavioural data. Social media play an instrumental role, acting as both the source of data and the enabling mechanism through which this form of Community OR occurs. Social media afford new possibilities for community empowerment and participation, with consequences for social enterprise and citizenship. We use Actor Network Theory, and specifically the language of translations, hybrid forums, and Callon's Co-production of Knowledge Model (CKM), as the methodological basis for our definition and analysis. The appearance of hybrid forums as a self-organising response to community needs after an event would seem to be a natural milieu for a range of OR competencies. However, unlike traditional practitioner-led engagements, here the OR practitioner's competency enters in a supportive rather than leading role. We support our argument through the analysis of social media data arising from the community response to a devastating flooding event – the Carlisle floods of December 2015.

Keywords: Community OR; Soft OR; Actor network theory; Co-production of knowledge model; Hybrid forums (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0377221718300456
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ejores:v:268:y:2018:i:3:p:809-824

DOI: 10.1016/j.ejor.2018.01.024

Access Statistics for this article

European Journal of Operational Research is currently edited by Roman Slowinski, Jesus Artalejo, Jean-Charles. Billaut, Robert Dyson and Lorenzo Peccati

More articles in European Journal of Operational Research from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().