Rigour Versus Relevance in Philisophy of Management Science

Introduction

The goal of this paper is to place the thesis “A Decision Support Tool for the Optimal Product Mix for ROC Eindhoven” on the rigor-relevance discussion and to make a suggestion how the thesis could be altered to bring it more to the center of the rigor-relevance debate. An analysis of the thesis should point out its current position in the debate and this is followed by specific suggestions how to make it more balanced.

Analysis of the thesis

Thesis description

The thesis under consideration is about finding a proper tool for finding the optimal product mix at the ROC in Eindhoven. The ROC is an educational organization and the products considered in the thesis are educational programs from the engineering department. Some of the programs were not at all profitable, and the Board wanted these programs identified in order for possible cancellation of certain programs when the financial constraints are exceeded. The deliverables were therefore two-sided; a list of quantitative factors stressing the important aspects of the different programs, and a software tool, which can be used to assess the programs financially, using certain quantitative factors. Because the ROC is a non-profit educational organization, the main restriction important in calculating an optimal product mix was having an overall profit of at least zero. During the project this restriction was changed to requiring that all programs by themselves were at least break-even or profitable. Programs were judged on different qualitative and quantitative factors which influence the optimal product mix. The quantitative factors were used to determine the financial viability of a program, and the qualitative factors determine the importance of a programs for students, school, industry, and society as a whole. Both factors were determined using interviews and surveys. Eventually, six quantitative factors were found. The score on each of these factors determines the overall score of a particular educational program. The objective function used to determine which programs are redundant is about the maximization of the number of students in education, restricted to the zero profit constraint. Upon using the software tool certain recommendations have been made regarding the future of some of the programs active at that time.

Approach of the thesis

Generalization

The optimization model is developed with the aim to use the results on more schools in mind, as can be found on page 56. The rationalization for the conclusion that this is possible is that the strategy of other ROC’s have great similarities to that of ROC Eindhoven. The model strives to achieve this by incorporating a number of parameters that can be altered to match different organizations. However, the incorporation