A rejoinder from Paul Finlay and Chris Marples
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A rejoinder from Paul Finlay and Chris Marples
The major concern expressed in both of the letters from Colin Eden (above and OR Insight 5(1)) and in that from his former Strathclyde associate Steve Cropper is the facilitation time associated with SODA that we stated in our article. This point will be discussed later: first to deal with the other issues raised in the letters, beginning with Colins second.
Colin takes us to task for our using the word 'typical' when we based our account on two case studies. There were cases written by Colin himself to show typical appli-
cations of the SODA methodology. Indeed, his article with Simpson that appeared in 1989 is entitled SODA and cognitive mapping in practice'. We used Colins articles as we were doing exactly what he was doing showing how SODA was used in practice. Did Colin use non-typical examples to show this?
We do not think that we are unduly fussed by the distinc-
tion between 'messy problems' and 'strategy development'. lt was Colin himself who introduced this, to our minds, incorrect distinction. The distinction that Colin is writing about is between ad-hoc studies and strategy formulation: both can be 'messy'.
On reflection we accept that for the sake of completeness
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OR insight Vol. 5 No. 2 March-June 1992
we should have included time estimates for all of the methods we described. The reason why we only gave
initial estimate where he states 'The estimate of effort involved in a SODA programme made by the authors is on the high side given current practice - it is more con-
estimates for the application of the SODA methodology is that we described it as it has been portrayed, it appeared to be by far the most demanding in terms of overall time
sistent with programmes involving second interviews...'
required by the facilitator, and very different from the others in terms of pre-workshop activity. We also believe that estimates for the other methodologies are less rele-
Steve informs us that second interviews are now seldom used. We can understand that the present pressures of time and cost on organisations will lead to shorter facilita-
related to the duration of the workshop(s).
being undertaken, but, as with the Eden and Simpson
vant since for these the facilitator time is more directly
tions. We were aware that shorter facilitations were article, our aim with our article was to describe the SODA methodology, not simply to describe a facilitation session. We made this point strongly in our first letter.
We accept that it would appear valuable to make similar calculations using the same method for the other GDSSs described. However, we agree with Colin that whatever the background methodology the range of effort involved in facilitation is likely to be large, depending as it does on
The gist of much of Colin and Steve's letters is that
SODA is a flexible methodology and is used in a manner that suits the client situation. We accept that such flexibil-
the different client situations. Given that the mode of
ity is the essence of good co
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