Abstract

Community OR (COR) emerged as a labelled field in the early 1970's as the result of attempts of OR workers to extend their clientele from the military and industry to communities. These attempts have not been unsuccessful. The first step taken in the paper is to summarise the process and the results of some projects in COR - to get a 'feel' of the field. Next a number of issues are identified that appear to slow down the development of the field. The seventh issue is the lack of ways to identify and evaluate the success of projects. Although most authors claim that their methods have proved their mettle, no systematic attempts appear available to demonstrate that this is indeed the case. A research design is proposed to initiate debate on this issue. It involves a series of steps - first to create a community implementing some task, next to change its coordinating language so the community starts to be able to exhaust all relevant experiences that are profitable as resources to the task. An example of the use of this design is provided.