Introduction
In Chapter 2 we saw that student field projects in business and management
can be based either on the empirical cycle, aimed at developing descriptive
or explanatory knowledge, or on the problem solving cycle, aimed at
developing solutions for field problems. For the remainder of this handbook
we discuss the methodology for the second type of project: the problem
solving project. It is a design-oriented and theory-informed methodology.
There are, of course, other problem solving strategies, and our methodology
is not necessarily the best one for each and every business or
organizational problem; it has a particular domain of application.
In this chapter we discuss first the foundations of this methodology and the
types of field problems for which this methodology is appropriate. Then we
discuss the nature of the problem solving project and its basic set-up, and
we conclude by presenting the characteristics of professionally executed
field problem solving projects, which are quite different from projects that
aim to produce descriptive and explanatory knowledge.
Rational problem solving
This design-oriented and theory-informed methodology for business and
organizational problem solving builds on the traditions of rational problem
solving (Visscher and Visscher-Voerman, 2010). Systematic enquiry into
problem solving, aimed at uncovering general principles, started with the
work of Herbert Simon, Allen Newell and colleagues in the 1950s (see, for
example, Newell and Simon, 1972). Their work strongly influenced research in
cognitive science, artificial intelligence, management science and
economics. A related stream of research developed on organizational
decision-making, which was, in its formative years of the 1960s and 1970s,
predominantly rational in orientation (see, for example, Simon, 1960). An
especially representative example of this approach is the book by Kepner and
Tregoe (1981). However, our design-oriented methodology differs from this
rational problem solving or decision-making approach in two significant
aspects.