Journal of the Operational Research Society

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Linear Programming: A Modern Integrated

Analysis

R Saigal

To cite this article: R Saigal (1997) Linear Programming: A Modern Integrated Analysis, Journal of
the Operational Research Society, 48:7, 762-762, DOI: 10.1057/palgrave.jors.2600826

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Journal of the Operational Research Society (1997) 48, 756±765 #1997 Operational Research Society Ltd. All rights reserved. 0160-5682/97 $12.00

Book selection
Edited by JM Wilson

A Gammerman: Computational Learning and Probabilistic Reasoning 756

C Huxham: Creating Collaborative Advantage 757
B Kolman and RE Beck: Elementary Linear Programming and MJ Panik: Linear Programming 758
SI Gass and CM Harris: Encyclopedia of Operations Research and Management Science 759
M Wisniewski and R Stead: Foundation Quantitative Methods for Business 760
JM Collins and TW Ruel®: Strategic Risk: A State De®ned Approach 761
L Bianco and P Toth (Eds): Advanced Methods in Transportation Analysis 761
R. Saigal: Linear Programming: A Modern Integrated Analysis 762
M Alvesson and H Willmott: Making Sense of Management: A Critical Introduction 762
M Daskin: Network and Discrete Location: Models, Algorithms and Applications 763
P Chretienne, EG Coffman, JK Lenstra and Z Liu (Eds): Scheduling Theory and its Applications 764

Computational Learning and Probabilistic Reasoning ing and causal graphs. In the subsequent chapter, VG Vovk
develops some of Pearl's own ideas and proposes a new
A Gammerman (ed) semantics for Pearl's action calculus. Although this
John Wiley & Sons, Chichester, in association with provides quite demanding reading, this chapter contains
UNICOM, 1996 xxv ‡ 312 pp. £40.00 ISBN 0471 96279 some stimulating ideas. The remaining two chapters of the
section have a more practical focus, one on ef®cient
This book has arisen out of a conference on Applied estimation and model selection in large graphical models
Decision Technologies (ADT95) run by UNICOM Semi- and the other on the use of graphical models to solve some
nars and held in London in April 1995. There are eighteen problems in multivariate statistical analysis.
research papers organised into four sections. This is not a It is Section Three though that provides the most prac-
book for the novice in this ®eld but should provide an tical material in the whole book. There is an interesting
invaluable resource to the researcher. The editor has application of Bayesian belief networks to statistical
ensured that the material is largely well presented, with a modelling of offender pro®ling and another application of
uniform style and a good index. As is so often the case with the same technique in medicine where the important
such collections of research material, the lack of an problem of prediction of disease development is addressed.
introductory chapter and of a coherent theme throughout Two other chapters in this section use neural networks and
the book make it unapproachable as a single volume. The genetic algorithms to enhance the performance of Bayesian
division into four sections is an attempt to make it more networks.
readable but it is sometimes dif®cult to follow the criteria The ®nal section of the book purports to describe related
used for such a partition. theoretical work in the ®eld of probabilistic reasoning. In
The ®rst section of the book describes several inductive practice it comprises ®ve rather disparate but nevertheless
principles and techniques used in computational learning. interesting papers addressing a variety of issues arising in
Vladimar Vapnik develops the structure of a statistical the ®eld. There are papers concerning the relation of
learning theory, discussing the problem of learning from probabilistic reasoning and game theory, on dynamic
examples using statistical techniques. Subsequent papers in programming and, concerning cluster analysis. In the ®nal
this section cover stochastic complexity, MML inference of paper of the book, the stability of decision rules is
predictive trees, graphs and nets, the association between discussed within the framework of a semiparametric
information compression and reasoning and two denota- model of elliptically contoured distributions.
tional learning models. This is not a book to read cover to cover; it is more a
Section two of the book contains material on causal collection of largely well written, academic papers. In my
probabilistic models. The chapter by J Pearl provides a very view, these papers would have been better produced as one
readable summary of the recent advances in causal reason- or more special editions of a research journal. At the very
 Book Selection 757

least, to make a worthwhile book, each paper should have without taking away the story-lines in the subsequent
its own abstract and there should have been an introductory chapters. It is as though she is offering an enticement to
chapter covering the ®eld and its practical importance. As it her audience to read on.
is, I feel very few members of the OR Society will gain The chapters are grouped into ®ve sections, with parts 1
much from this publication. It represents a lost opportunity and 5 being single chapters written by Chris (as an
being strictly for the experts. Introduction illustrating her frameworks, and as Closure).
The second section continues to use the frameworks and is
University of East Anglia VJ Rayward-Smith titled `Rationales and Contexts for Collaboration', having
three chapters covering, essentially, a theoretical base. But
perhaps to say `theory' is too strong since the basic support
Creating Collaborative Advantage of the collaboration is based on soft systems approaches; or
on cognitive mapping which utilises some neat softwareÐ
C. Huxham Graphics COPE, for instanceÐwhich is used to illustrate
Sage, London, 1996. ix ‡ 178 pp. £12.95 the concepts expressed by stakeholders in a scenario. The
ISSBN 0 8039 7498 1 third section, `Collaboration in Practice: Key issues', also
has three chapters looking at practice: in the lead chapter
I cannot quite match the familiar, homely Prologue with the problems of the sustainability of the collaboration are
which Chris Huxham begins her book: however I am able addressed. Such a dif®cult problem once the ®rst ¯ush of
to see the sea, at Bournemouth, just after the Conservative excitement has died away! Indeed each of these chapters
party Congress. The town is windswept, the sea rough, and deals with the issues surrounding the maintenance of the
the visitors this week-end look frozen as the leaves fall: the collaboration drawing on the stake-holder concepts
weather is giving us an introduction to Winter. I cannot discussed in the second section. The fourth part titled
help wondering if there were any collaborations made last `Intervention Processes for Collaboration' focuses on the
week at the Congress. In contrast to the interpersonal workings of collaborative groups and how to facilitate this
collaborations that may have arisen at that political process. It grasps the vexing question of the degree to which
Congress, this book is about the processes that support facilitators might impress their feelings on the groups, or
the collaboration of organisations, and the situations in whether they have to be strictly neutral and allow the groups
which individuals therein ®nd themselves when they initiate to generate their own insights through the act of facilitation.
collaborations. The book is constructed well, and while, as Chris says,
As Chris Huxham says in that PrologueÐshe could not some of the chapters could have been placed in alternative
help but be struck at the variety developed within her book sections, I found no false ¯ow in the arguments. The tone is
stemming from the theses of her invited authors, yet all always considered and considerate of the reader; and
somehow attempted to collaborateÐno doubt helped by her through this mechanism, the reader comprehends that the
caring manner and editorial vigour. She goes on to explain facilitator has to be considerate of the groups who are
a little of why she initiated the bookÐit was because (and I struggling with learning to collaborate.
quote from pages 1, 2): Who should read the book, or even buy the book? This is
a dif®cult question. We know that inter-organisational
 Collaboration is happening: alliances are very popular and take place for a myriad of
right across the world, people are doing it, or rather, reasons. Sometimes these collaborations work, but often
people are trying to, often unsuccessfully; they may seem to be a good idea, then ¯ounder. With
people are frequently being required (for example, by hindsight we would say the partners should have read the
government mandate) to do it, also often unsuccess- book well before entering into their negotiations. It is a
fully. worthwhile book to read in parallel with the more classic
 Collaboration is valuable: texts on Strategic Management (as taught in Business
it can be a good way of achieving things that would be Schools), and because of its substantive content, it should
dif®cult, or impossible for an organisation to do on its be read by those involved in public sector management.
own (the self-interest motivation); The very dif®cult facilitation processes and arcane techni-
it is the only way to tackle societal problems (the moral ques which lead to deep and long-lasting collaboration are
imperative). well described. Yet, although easy to read, I fear the book
 Collaboration is dif®cult: may be dismissed simply because the authors have taken
it is non-trivial in practice because of a number of pains to describe the dif®culties in so clear a fashion. I wish
inherent hazards. it every success, it deserves it.
This justi®cation leads her into ®rst chapter where she
lays the groundwork for the following authors. She puts to
the reader succinct argument, frameworks and discussion Aston Business School J Kidd
758 Journal of the Operational Research Society Vol. 47, No. 7

Elementary Linear Programming (2nd edition) mention is made of more recent attempts to speed up
traditional algorithms such as assignment.
B Kolman and RE Beck The book ends with a useful treatment in six pages of an
Academic Press, London, 1995. xxii ‡ 449 pp. £24.95 interior point algorithm and then some brief details on
ISBN 0 12 417910 x micro computer software and use of the diskette provided.
The software provided is suitable for very small problems
Linear Programming ± Mathematics, Theory and only and is included so that the exercises in the book can be
Algorithms solved. It is fun to use but I found it quite easy to create
unintentional errors that caused an exit from the system.
MJ Panik This might be alarming for the novice user. For larger
Kluwer Academic Publishers, London, 1996. x ‡ 496 pp. problems the authors recommend readers to use the
£127.00 ISBN 0 7223 3782 4 LINDO1 system. Disappointingly, the computer software
orientation of the book is limited. Eta-vectors are introduced
Although similarly titled covering similar ground, these to form a link between simplex `paper calculations' and
two books offer a contrast. The book by Kolman and Beck software calculations but there is only an optional section on
is potentially the more promising as it has run to a second computer aspects (11 pages). No mention is made of non-
edition, so I will consider it ®rst. USA software. One other drawback is the lack of references
The fact that the book by Kolman and Beck has run to a e.g. Land and Doig,2 the standard reference on Branch and
second edition is a little curious in that ®fteen years have Bound is not mentioned.
elapsed since the ®rst edition, so this is the ®rst update for a The book by Kolman and Beck has some resemblance to
long time. In their list of `What is new in the second the standard work on LP by Hadley.3 The level of detail is
edition' the authors include many areas of clari®cation and similar to Hadley3 and the book under review might be,
extension and redirection, plus the inclusion of some favourably, considered as a modernised version with the
computer software and an introduction to the Karmarkar addition of material on integer programming. For UK users
algorithm (as an appendix). In a list of helpful journals to the treatment would have to be regarded as too detailed and
be consulted regarding OR matters, readers of this journal few lecturers could expect students to study all the topics of
will be disappointed to see that `Operational Research the book in the course of a module on LP. However, the
Quarterly' is still given as the title of this journal! book does provide an excellent source of reference material
The book starts off with a six page prologue on what OR with excellent presentation of concepts, clear development
is (namely the steps of the model building process) and and few misprints.
what mathematical modelling involves. There then follows The second book is even more detailed, abstract and
an optional chapter of 44 pages on linear algebra. Then mathematical. The author, Panik, attempts to cover only
Chapters 1±3 form the heart of the book, covering nearly linear programming but to provide a comprehensive treat-
250 pages of material on LP. The development is very ment of both the simplex and the interior point families of
carefully achieved, with lots of detail. There are many algorithms. The book starts off with a heavy introduction
examples, plenty of pictures and little is left ambiguous. and suggests that all required mathematics will be devel-
Sections have exercises at the end, for routine work on oped within the book. However, the level of mathematics
small problems and, in addition, a set of `projects' is required to commence reading should not be underesti-
included from time to time. The projects are longer exer- mated. Chapter 2 develops sixty pages of necessary maths.
cises where more `vagueness' (and hence realism) has been In Chapter 3, LP is introduced in various canonical forms
introduced. The projects seem a useful feature. The LP leading into Chapter 4 on optimality and duality. Feasible
material includes much detail on cycling, degeneracy, the solutions, bases and the Simplex algorithm are covered in
2-phase approach, `big M' and so on, and all is painstak- Chapter 5 and this is followed up in Chapter 6 by discus-
ingly presented although more diagrams to illustrate sensi- sion on the existence of optimality (Karush-Kuhn-Tucker
tivity would be welcome. A good discussion of duality is conditions)Ðthe treatment requiring a knowledge of partial
presented. Throughout the requirement is for moderate derivatives.
skills in mathematics. Chapters 7±9 form a set, covering computational (but not
From LP the book moves into IP in Chapter 4 with computer) aspects of LP namely improvement of solution,
Branch and Bound and Cutting Planes being the algorithms Phase 1, Phase 2, interval LP and absolute valued func-
chosen for elaboration. Disappointingly, there is no tionals. Dual simplex, primal=dual and complementary
mention of Branch and Cut, facets or any of the approaches pivot methods follow in Chapter 10. Next come two
to closing the integrality gap. After IP, a long chapter (100 chapters on postoptimality, which are very heavy going.
pages) is devoted to special types of LP problemsÐtrans- The notation is daunting here and the layout is off-putting,
portation, assignment, network etc. Algorithms are however, useful tables of upper and lower limits of coef®-
described, but usually only traditional approaches, and no cient or variable values are provided.
 Book Selection 759

The ®nal large chapter of this book is a ninety page commissioned articles each taking up a few large format
treatment of different types of interior point methods, (8 inch by 11 inch) pages, together with several hundred
including projective, af®ne potential reduction, primal brief dictionary type entries. It has taken several years to
and af®ne scaling and path following. This is very much produce and is promoted as having `involved 200 contri-
a tour-de-force and is almost a book in itself. It is followed butors who are the authoritative ®gures in every area of
by a shorter chapter on interior point methods for solving operations research'. In fact the vast majority of the contri-
linear complementarity problems. And there the book butors are based in North America. This in itself may not be
endsÐno conclusions, no exercises at chapter ends, but surprising since this is an American project, but had more
lots of carefully argued theorems backed up by examples to contributors from the rest of the world been included certain
aid the reader understand the abstract material. At the end omissions might have been avoided e.g. there is no entry
of the book there is a useful appendix covering steepest that deals with outranking methodsÐthese are aids to
edge simplex methods. multiple criteria decision making which originated in
The book's strengths seem to lie in the development of Europe. Also, those wanting to ®nd out about `Soft O.R.'
the interior point material. Recent research material is will not ®nd it in the index; there is a two and a half page
incorporated and clari®ed from the original papers to piece on problem structuring method but I feel that other
make it more palatable, which provides a useful service. related articles should have been included by those working
However, the book remains one for the dedicated in this areaÐsuch people tend to be based in the UK.
researcher, despite the author's claim to have used much To their credit the editorial team have not restricted the
of the material for lectures. I cannot imagine any module in coverage to those topics usually found in student textbooks,
a British university with the time or inclination to tackle the but have also included areas which are at the interfaces
topics included in this book, despite it being so carefully with other subjects, for example neural networks, econo-
written. Thus the book will have a very limited specialist metrics, arti®cial intelligence. There are also articles
market. Like the book by Kolman and Beck there are few devoted to sectors of application for example hospitals,
misprints, but layout and fonts are more thesis-like and agriculture, higher education, military, crime and justice,
discouraging. water resources, electric power systems, emergency
These two books seem more likely to ®nd favour with a services. On the other hand there are things which seem
US audience than with a UK one. The topics they cover are to have been forgotten, such as the teaching of OR, soft-
not usually covered in such abstract detail in British ware for OR (although there is a forward-looking article on
Universities, and when covered in some level of detail, spreadsheets), OR on the Internet, performance indicators,
the link with applications and software is stronger. Thus the compromise programming, constrained logic programming,
two texts might be regarded as traditional, or even old- timetabling (there is an article on scheduling and sequen-
fashioned, by readers of this journal, but the achievements cing but this is devoted to machine scheduling). It is
of the authors should not be belittled. however pleasing to read in the preface that feedback on
such shortcomings is welcomed, so presumably an even
Loughborough University JM Wilson better second edition will appear. There may then be the
problem of having too much to ®t in a single volume. One
References could create some space by removing the 25 page table of
contents which merely lists every entry in the same order as
1 LINDO, Lindo Systems, 1415 North Dayton Avenue, Chicago it appears in the book. The numerous entries which are
60622, USA.
merely cross-references could also be deleted as the index
2 Land AH and Doig AG (1960). An automatic method for
solving discrete programming problems. Econometrica 28: already provides this information.
497±520. The articles are intended to serve as initial sources of
3 Hadley G (1962). Linear Programming. Addison-Wesley, information for decision makers and problem solvers in
London. business, industry, government and academia, with special
emphasis to the needs of students. Flicking through the
Encyclopedia of Operations Research and Management book one does not see huge chunks of mathematics, so
Science most entries will not be too off-putting in this regard for
those without a technical background. It is unfortunate that
SI Gass and CM Harris (eds) there are so few diagrams as these could have greatly aided
Kluwer Academic, Boston, Dordrecht, London, 1996. understanding e.g. anyone explaining the term `convex
xxxx ‡ 753 pp. £248.50, $350, D¯ 650. ISBN 0 7923 9590 5 function' would draw a simple sketch, yet we are only
given a verbal de®nition in terms of linear interpolation.
To my knowledge this is the ®rst ever single volume Relevant applications are usually provided and a very
encyclopedia on the subject and as such it is to be useful feature is that each major article contains references
welcomed. The book consists of about two hundred to the literature.
760 Journal of the Operational Research Society Vol. 47, No. 7

My main recommendations for any future edition is that: constructs, or the transliteration from maths into English
for example `dY=dX (pronounced `dee Y by dee X)',
1. the references to the literature should include
d2P=dX2 (pronounced `dee two P by dee X squared).
survey=review papers and monographs;
These pronunciation guidelines lead occasionally to inad-
2. there should be a discussion of what software is available
vertent wit, for example `a priori (pronounced `a pry-or-
for the various techniques;
eye')'; not a bad mnemonic rule after all.
3. relevant World Wide Web pages be cited, together with
Last, the book shows quite strongly how quanti®cation
pointers to other Internet resources.
might help to exert a ®rm grasp of the real world by
Finally, the price of this book does nothing to recom- presenting the appropriate excerpts from the Financial
mend it; it is preposterous and unacceptable. I sincerely Times for every bit of arithmetic taught. This is a highly
hope that a cheaper, possibly paperback, version be made original innovation and the most positive contribution of the
available so that this major undertaking receives the recog- textbook. It should have a powerful impact on the students
nition and wide acceptance it deserves. who can relate immediately to bits of business journalese so
far incomprehensible to the uninitiated, but it may create a
further clientele among journalists trying their hand in a
University of Hertfordshire C. Tofallis
®nancial environment.
The book is divided into 14 chapters, perhaps too many,
going from simple arithmetic, through elementary algebra
Foundation Quantitative Methods for Business and analytic geometry onto statistics, forecasting and
investment appraisal. In an indirect way the arrangement
M Wisniewski and R Stead of chapters indicates the dominance of statistics in business
Pitman Publishing, London, UK., 1996. IX ‡ 499 pp. £17.99. as about two thirds of the chapters have a statistical twist.
ISBN 0 273 607655 0 Statistical theory may not be gone into at great length, but
the student is exposed to hypothesis testing and simple
If your mathematics have left you at the proverbial ordinary linear regression up to elementary time series analysis.
level and you suddenly feel an urge to follow a business The chapters on uncertainty and on ®nancial decisions
course this is an excellent book to refresh your arithmetic are excellent, delivering rather complex concepts (expected
and to lead you through the intracies of elementary quanti- value, discounting) with exemplary clarity. The chapter on
tative methods for business such as statistics, forecasting, non-linear functions is rather dense, with rather poor
probabilistic decision making or ®nance. diagrams and restricted to quadratic functions. This is a
The book has various innovative features. It is clearly pity as the authors could have pro®ted from the teaching of
user friendly, particularly suited for the absolute ignora- economics on the topic. All elementary economic text-
muses. It assumes that the students have so far demon- books have adequate graphical=non-analytical presenta-
strated no interest in quantitative methods whatsoever and tions at an interesting level of generality.
that their attention span is minimal. The authors' only Perhaps also a mild critique might be voiced on the
restriction set out early in the book is the ability to count, emphasis shown in the book on formulae as opposed to
to perform simple arithmetic and to be familiar with derivations from ®rst principles, a scheme which seemed a
common number systems (such as pounds sterling and priori closer to the authors' teaching philosophy. Further-
pounds avoirdupois). It is not for dummies however, as more perhaps too much stress has been placed on the
the core of the material, elementary as it may be, is critical elementary mathematics that are easily accessible from
for successful business operations and has to be mastered any GCSE textbook. It is inconceivable that users may
eventually. not known rounding, negative numbers, fractions or deci-
Each chapter presents its Learning Objectives allowing mals etc.
the student a quick evaluation of progress. Pre-requisites The authors do not address the notion of optimisation as
within chapters are not very strict allowing the student confronted in the typical OR problems. Actually the
cheerful browsing. The book is full of examples and concept of OR does not appear in text, yet another proof
intelligent exercises, including Self-Review Questions. In of the conspiracy of silence about the discipline. This is a
most chapters there is a practical problem around which a great pity as any OR application, say an elementary LP or
solution is sought, drawing on theories and techniques just an inventory control problem, would have given the busi-
acquired. ness student a grasp of what optimisation is all about.
In one phrase, this book is a textbook that administers the Last, the authors seem keen to deliver a rich quantitative
elementary business mathematics to the students in very methods vocabulary and accurate terminology. However,
careful doses. The style is fresh and quite discursive, their index at the back of the book is sketchy and cannot be
approximating a teach-your-self course. For instance it used effectively as a lexicon of business terms, thus
even gives to the student the exact pronunciation of basic defeating at implementation their interesting initial idea.
 Book Selection 761

All in all the book achieves its goal to initiate students in To me this book is one of the more useful ones which I
business quantitative methods, but furthermore, I think it is have read in a long time. I think the authors have hit upon
also good for practising economic journalists, a profes- something which is very useful. As a result, I highly
sional class not famous for its quantitative skills. The recommend this book. It is only 200 pages and easy to read.
authors are modest not to suggest their book for managers,
but I dare say there are a few administrators promoted to University of Maryland C Leake
their level of incompetence, or shifted horizontally to an
area of ignorance that could pro®t from some belated
mathematical forti®cation.
Reference
1 Stevens SS (1951) Handbook of Experimental Psychol-
Ki®ssia S Kafandaris ogy. Wiley Publishing Co.: New York.

Strategic Risk: A State De®ned Approach

JM Collins and TW Rue¯i Advanced Methods in Transportation Analysis

Kluwer Academic Publishers, Norwell, MA, 1996. xv+218
pp. £57.75 ISBN 0 7923 9661 8 L Bianco and P Toth (Eds)
Springer-Verlag, Heidelberg, 1966. xv+619 pp. DM 198.00.
ISBN 3 540 61118 5
The stated purpose of this book is provide a new approach
to assessing risk. The book accomplishes this purpose, and This expensive, Springer book is a refereed selection of 27
more. The academic approaches from Von Neumann to the papers from a June 1994, symposium (TRISTAN II) held in
present treat risk as being represented by a real variable in Capri, Italy. North American and EU authors were the
order to take advantage of the analytical tools which are sources of 23 papers with additional contributions from
supported by real variables. This is done even though much Israel (2), Japan (1) and Poland (1). Although many of the
of the data which is collected is ordinal, for example, a papers use, by any standard, `Advanced Methods', several
scale which rates something on a scale from 1±10. Stevens1 of them are accessible at a UK `science undergraduate'
in his handbook on psychological measurements points out level. There is much interesting, implemented work
the difference between numbering systems in the ®rst described which is accessible to students of, for example,
chapter of this handbook. This is something that almost simulation, mathematical programming and mathematical
every analyst is guilty of during his career: assuming ordinal modelling.
or 1±1 correspondence data is represented by the real The Italian editors were however content to classify the
number system. We do this almost without thinking when papers as Transportation Planning (14), Transportation
we incorporate rating scales and indicator variables (e.g. to Management (4) and Vehicle Management (9). In view of
indicate gender) in our regression equations. The use of the real-time, decision making focus in many of the papers
Likert Scales in regression analysis is a common example of alternative classi®cations would have added value.
this type of analysis. This problem is avoided by the authors Almost all the refereed papers are free of important
in their investigation of risk. errors. The editors have also provided a useful six page
Risk is determined by the position of one organization in Foreword, providing a summary of the book's contents.
a matrix based upon their relative performance on some The Transportation Planning papers cover: dynamic
measure of interest. This method is re®ned further to adjustment of estimated origin-destination matrices, equili-
consider changes in relative position to further re®ne their brium assignment with varying value of time for users,
state de®ned approach. This covers the part that the book route guidance systems and demand management
said it would provide, but does not consider its additional measures, integration of public and private transport sub-
features. The methods discussed in this book transcend risk systems including parking problems, inter-city and rural
analysis. This same method can be used to sort out systems traveller utility models including timetable effects, public
when comparing model runs using different inputs. In some transport zone pricing, multicriteria bus system design
of these instances systems swap places in their order with (ELECTRE) and a new heuristic approach to public trans-
respect to performance measures. The methods shown in port route design.
this book would work very nicely in solving some of the The so-called Transportation Management papers cover:
problems associated with determining which is the best network representation and data management, parallel
system or even managerial approach. computing algorithms for solving separable, convex
762 Journal of the Operational Research Society Vol. 47, No. 7

network problems, price regulation of near monopoly, Making Sense of Management: A Critical Introduction
freight transportation and pro®t sharing by freight carriers.
The Vehicle Management papers cover: predictive infor- M Alvesson and H Willmott
mation in motorist route guidance systems including park- Sage Publications, London, 1996. x+246 pp. £13.95.
ing, public transport dispatch control tools, queueing ISBN 0 8039 8389 1
optimisation at a single signalized intersection, real time
network traf®c simulation incorporating signal timing The book is divided into three parts. The ®rst part provides
controls, dynamic vehicle assignment in ¯eet management, an introduction to Critical Theory (CT) and its relationship
the vehicle routing problem with backhauls and a Genetic to modern society. The discussion then shifts to the power
Algorithm approach to bus driver scheduling, included in and limitations of science, concluding with a brief intro-
A. Wren's IMPACS product. duction to the history, tradition and critiques of CT.
The second part deals with management conceptualisa-
ECGD I Calvert tions and specialisms. An examination of conventional
metaphors is presented (for example organizations as
machines) and of their use in management, followed by a
discussion of CTs counter-conceptualisations and the intro-
duction of alternative metaphors (for example management
as mysti®cation). Next a `critical' discussion of selective
management specialisms is undertaken based on the
Linear Programming: A Modern Integrated Analysis
premise that some of them are concerned with the softer
R Saigal (organization theory, marketing and strategic management)
Kluwer Academic Publishers, London, 1995. xi+342 pp. side of management, whereas others deal with the harder
£71.50 ISBN 0 7923 9622 7 (accounting, information systems and OR) concerns of
quanti®cation and objective forms of measurement.
The ®nal part of the book attempts an integration of CT
The most notable feature of this book is what it does not
and management. It starts with a recasting of emancipation
have. There are no diagrams, no numerical examples. no
in management, moving through a brief presentation of
exercises, and minimal explanation as to the motivation,
CT's critiques (for example intellectualism, essentialism),
except mathematical curiosity, for the different algorithms.
to a re-conceptualization of emancipation. A model
In the preface the author states that he has been teaching
summarizing types and foci of emancipation is provided
these ideas for several years at American Universities; as a
and the chapter concludes with an illustration of the
lecturer myself I am amazed that the author is able to teach
possibilities for micro-emancipation in management. The
any mathematical programming without such aids. The
book ends with an attempt to bring CT into management
content of this book is a mathematical presentation of
practice suggesting some ideas for more re¯ective work
algorithms for linear programming. The initial chapters
methods, inspirations for working life and an endeavour to
contain necessary mathematical background, including the
locate critical management theory (CMT) in the context of
duality theorem and complimentary slackness. The fourth
management education and research.
chapter presents three variants of the simplex method, the
As is the case with any book, it has some good and bad
primal, dual and primal-dual algorithms. The ®fth chapter,
points. The bad points relate to the claims that are made
half the book, presents interior point methods, that is,
concerning criticality and the notion of criticism. The book
primal and dual af®ne scaling methods, path following
provides an exaggerated feel of something new. It does not
methods and a projective transformation method. The
deliver, however: there is a regurgitation of ideas that
®nal chapter is concerned with implementation of the
simply re¯ect old ideas about rationalities and their
algorithms which any serious code writer would consider
comparison. Even the title of the book is somewhat
does not do justice to this art.
misleading, since in many places the book appears as an
The algorithms are well presented, the steps clearly
introduction to CMT rather than a critical introduction to
de®ned, the assumptions stated, and there is suf®cient
management.
linking text so that the reader is not in doubt as to how
Another dif®culty concerns the book's targeted audience,
the method will achieve its aim. If you have to teach the
which I interpreted as being mainly ®nal year and post-
theory of interior point methods then this book would be
graduate students. I think that readers lacking university
worth considering. It gives the theory in a clear fashion
education, will ®nd the presentation rather dif®cult. On the
leaving you to devise the numerical examples and draw the
other hand readers familiar with the CMT discourse prob-
diagrams.
ably will ®nd the conceptual contribution of the book of
limited interest (due to its introductory character). I also
London School of Economics S Powell feel that a lot of the authors' ammunition is often targeted
 Book Selection 763

at straw men and sitting ducks. For example challenging concentrated description of CTs development and its
the early mechanistic conceptions of BPR, or its stereo- discussion of critical issues which should make a contribu-
typical top=down nature appears rather unfruitful, espe- tion to the indicated target audience's discourse.
cially when considering that BPR, despite some success, is
not a complete piece of work. University of Lincolnshire and Humberside D Tsagdis
Extensive pigeon-holing is also in operation: Soft
Systems Methodoloy and Total System Intervention are
presented as soft and critical OR respectively. Apart from
being disturbing and uninformative, this does not seem to Network and Discrete Location: Models, Algorithms
serve any further purpose in the book. and Applications
A similar feeling of lack of point takes place when
Popper is referred to as an uncritical positivist. Any reading M Daskin
of Popper's writings makes it clear that he was a proponent John Wiley & Sons, Chichester, 1995. 498 pp. £70.00.
of criticality in science and was critical himself. However, ISBN 0 471 01897-X
he did not need to embrace criticality to identify himself.
What the authors do not come to grips with is the fact that This is a text book on location analysis. To the best of my
there do exist procedures for being critical in a particular knowledge, this is the ®rst book which is made readily
context and at a particular time, if there is a danger of not available for teaching purposes. It covers most discrete
being suf®ciently critical. They defend this possibility by areas of location (the continuous case is not treated).
taking arguments from the history of Western thoughtÐ Detailed examples are used to illustrate all methods
which seems like shooting the proverbial mouse with a discussed in this book. Each chapter ®nishes with a set of
cannon. I had wished the authors to be a little bit more exercises, some of which can be tackled using the software
open, therefore, about the fact that one does not have to be (SITUATION) which is attached to the book.
uncritical if one does not embrace their espoused criticality. This book consists of nine chapters; the ®rst three are
In fact, I would say that the reverse is the case. Contrary to introductory chapters on general key issues on location
what the authors seem to assume, not everyone wants to be problems and models, the role of linear programming,
emancipated regardless of time and context. duality theory and complexity analysis. The remaining
I also found some of the material used dated and chapters treat the following topics. The set covering
uncritically attended to. A case in point is the presentation problem and some basic extensions such as the maximum
of the framework of the four sociological paradigms. The expected set covering problem are treated in Chapter 4. The
reader is informed that the authors' doubts are suspended to solution approaches discussed are the greedy heuristic,
comment on the framework's heuristic value. This violation Lagrangian relaxation heuristic and B&B. When the ques-
of the authors' espoused critical stance is not of much tion is to minimise the maximum cover using a ®xed
value, especially when considering the fate of this particu- number of facilities, the problem becomes the p-centre
lar framework. It also suggests, contrary to the authors' problem, and this is the content of Chapter 5. Polynomial
intention, that there may be bene®ts to being uncritical. time algorithms for the unweighted and weighted absolute
This dif®culty can be directly traced to the Enlight- 1-centre, absolute 2-centre and the vertex 1-centre
enment's assumptionÐrather uncritical itself although the problems on trees are presented. For the unweighted
authors do not appear to see any dif®cultyÐthat once high- vertex p-centre problem on a general graph, an optimal
quality knowledge is available, improved action will natu- iterative procedure based on set covering solutions is also
rally follow. This obviously is not the case, nor is the outlined. The p-median problem is treated in Chapter 6. A
reverse true: improved action does not appear to depend on linear time algorithm for the 1-median problem on trees is
the availability of high-quality knowledge. described. For a general network and when p is variable,
Thus, the book falls short of its aim: to make clear what heuristic approaches are presented. A constructive heuris-
CMT actually contributes to management practice and tic, a neighbourhood search, an exchange heuristic and a
education. Bearing also in mind the treatment of the Lagrangian relaxation heuristic are described and supported
`critical theory' in which present day sciences have been by illustrative examples. Uncapacitated and capacitated
embedded for some centuries now, the attempt to locate ®xed charge location problems are discussed in Chapter
CMT in a research context can only be seen as over- 7. For the uncapacitated case, constructive heuristics
enthusiastic and not entirely without danger. (add=drop=interchange). Lagrangian relaxation heuristics,
I would like to close the review with the book's good and a dual based approach are treated in detail with
points which mainly relate to the work the authors have examples. When the facilities have limited capacities, two
done to collect and summarise their material. The book alternative relaxations are produced and an application of
scores considerable points for its rather generous references Bender's decomposition is also outlined. Chapter 8 presents
to women issues, its extensive bibliography (21 pp), the some mathematical formulations to deal with extensions of
764 Journal of the Operational Research Society Vol. 47, No. 7

the models described in previous chapters. Since most throughout. Perhaps the clearly high standard of editing
locational problems have con¯icting objectives, a section was responsible for the delay in the book being published.
on multi-objectives and speci®cally how to identify the The book contains informative reviews of stochastic
non-inferior solutions is produced. Other issues such as scheduling by Weiss, cyclic scheduling by Hanen and
hierarchical facility location problems including the possi- Munier and an excellent and concise review of job shop
bility of interaction between facilities, the combined loca- scheduling theory by Pinson. Highlights for me included
tion routing problem, hub locations and location of the opening paper by Lenstra and Schmoys on computing
undesirable facilities are discussed and their corresponding near-optimal schedules. The seemingly endless study of
mathematical models are provided. The last chapter is more complexity in various branches of scheduling theory had
of a general methodology chapter and deals with the four appeared to me to be a fairly barren area for practical
phases of a planning process (de®ning the most cost scheduling problems. However Lenstra and Schmoys
effective problem, conducting a technical analysis, commu- demonstrate that complexity analysis can be important in
nicating the results in an effective way and ®nally imple- determining the types of performance guarantees that might
menting the selected actions and policies). It is interesting be attainable for polynomial-time heuristics and approx-
to see that the author has stressed highly the importance of imation schemes. I have only limited knowledge of parallel
phase 1 which is about addressing the right problem and not processing in computer science but the paper by Rayward-
falling into the trap of tackling the simpli®ed or the wrong Smith, Burton and Janacek on the scheduling of parallel
problem simply because it is easier to do so. programs would seem to me have important implications in
Although this book is mostly designed for teaching that domain. The computational performance reported in
purposes, given the detailed solutions of the illustrative the paper by Herroelen and Demeulemeester on branch and
examples and the exercise list at the end of each chapter, it bound procedures for resource constrained project schedul-
does also emphasize, in places, the need for considering ing was impressive.
some interesting research issues which are supported by Stochastic scheduling seems attractive from the point of
appropriate references. I am also impressed and pleased by view of real problems but has restrictive assumptions which
the quantity of examples and exercises the author has did not seem to be addressed in this volume. The assump-
managed to gather over the years. In my view, this book tion of independent, identically distributed processing
is a useful information pack to have, especially for lecturers times, for instance, is dif®cult to justify in most real
giving a full or a part course in locational analysis for manufacturing environments. It was however interesting
OR=MS postgraduate students or for those ®nal year to read in the tutorial paper by Weiss, that a stochastic
students doing combined Mathematics with Management analysis shows that Johnson's rule, the mainstay of classi-
or Operational Research. cal ¯ow shop scheduling, underlying many heuristic
approaches, has little effect for the two-machine case for
University of Birmingham S Salhi a moderately large number of jobs.
It would have been useful to have included a paper in
this volume which examined critically the connections
between scheduling theory and queuing theory. However,
my main criticism of this book is the misleading title. The
Scheduling Theory and its Applications book addresses a fairly narrow range of topics related to
scheduling and the emphasis is most de®nitely on theory. It
P Chretienne, EG Coffman Jr., JK Lenstra and Z Liu (Eds) contains many lemmas, theorems, proofs, and conjectures.
John Wiley & Sons, Chichester, 1995. xv+365 pp. £40.00 A mathematical background, particularly in stochastic
ISBN 0 471 94059 3 processes and perhaps graph theory, is required to appreci-
ate the detail. This is the type of book which could be used
This book is based on a workshop held in France in 1992. It pro®tably by a theoretical computer scientist, mathematical
contains 17 papers on a range of topics in scheduling theory operational research theorist or probabilist, to ®nd new
with a particular emphasis on stochastic scheduling and research directions. Indeed there are numerous conjectures
related areas in queuing theory. Indeed some of the papers throughout which are ripe for many future PhDs in these
are purely queuing theory. Immediately noticeable is the areas.
high standard of presentation throughout the book. This is a Most of the papers do claim to be motivated by applica-
pleasant surprise in a book of this type with multiple tions in manufacturing, computer or communications
authors from nine countries. Most of the chapters have systems. However in most cases this is as far as applica-
clearly explained introductions. Often the structure and tions are considered. Where applications are given any
methods of proofs and algorithms are described before consideration it is generally in the area of computer and
the formal exposition. For me at least, this is always communications systems rather than manufacturing or
welcome in material of this kind. Referencing is excellent service sector problems. The paper by Gerasoulis and
 Book Selection 765

Yang for instance describes a software tool that uses problem. Overall this is a good book but it is a shame
scheduling algorithms to generate parallel code for distrib- that the title is inappropriate.
uted memory parallel machines.
I would not recommend this book to a practitioner in the
manufacturing or service sector with a real scheduling University of Nottingham B MacCarthy