Showing papers by "Simon French published in 2002"

Evaluation and Decision Models: a Critical Perspective

Abstract: (2002). Evaluation and Decision Models: a Critical Perspective. Journal of the Operational Research Society: Vol. 53, No. 7, pp. 809-809.

Decision Making: Recent Developments and Worldwide Applications

Abstract: This book is a collection of papers derived from the Decision Sciences Institute International Conference held in Athens in July 1999. I attended and, in fact, am a co-author of one of the papers in this collection. It was a good conference, but one with many parallel sessions crammed with papers: so many that the 2000-page proceedings distributed to participants limited each paper to an extended abstract of at most four sides. It was impossible, with so many papers, to attend all those of interest and very difficult to find the authors to garner further details. This collection is an attempt to provide, in one edited volume, a cross section of the papers, focusing on decision making and methodologies for its support in a wide range of application areas. There are 30 papers in this volume divided into the nine areas of: management information systems; education innovations and distance learning; international business; marketing; finance and banking; optimisation and decision making; multi-criteria decision analysis, aid and practice; decision support systems and information technology and; health care planning and hospital operations. As is immediately obvious, the volume cuts across many disciplines from operational research through decision support systems to management and business. I enjoyed reading it and found the depth in each paper that had been lacking in the four-page abstracts distributed at the conference. I believe that readers of JORS will find much of value here too. So would I recommend buying this edited collection? Well . . . Over the years in several reviews I have remarked on Kluwer’s pricing: they have clearly decided to market to libraries and ignore the possibility of sales to any individual of less than millionaire status. But a price of £125 for a 500page text produced from camera ready copy reaches new heights of absurdity. However good the contents, it is still a conference proceedings. Libraries would be much better advised to spend their money on textbooks, monographs and journals. As a contributor to this volume, I feel that I and the authors of all the papers have put considerable effort into presenting (and formatting!) our work only to have them condemned to obscurity by the policies of Kluwer. Quite simply, this book is not worth buying at this price. If you want to follow up the topics covered in this volume, you will find many equivalent papers in JORS and other journals— even in more modestly priced conference proceedings.