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The capital market is a bridge that transfers the savings of economic units with excess resources to investment units that need them. Using the capital market to finance the government expenses is among the most common form of financial transactions. Therefore the capital market is considered one of the major players of financing in the economy of any country. Iran’s capital market began its rapid development process in 2005 and within the past decade many financial institutes were formed by financing from the aforesaid market. Due to being new in Iran, the relation between the diverse and scattered components of the capital market has not been provided as a comprehensive model. The purpose of the present study is to investigate the structure and identify the aspects of financing services through Iran’s capital market that due to dynamic complexities of the issue (numerous players and interested parties, diverse and multiple aspects of services and conflict of interests between interested parties), soft systems methodology was used to study the current status. Therefore, in addition to performing triple analyses of cultural analysis and illustrating the rich picture of the current status, CATWOE analysis and root definition by holding numerous sessions with the interested parties were extracted that demonstrates how the financing process must be by including real world conditions. Results indicate that to improve the issue, changes in financing services processes must be implemented that emphasis on identifying and analyzing factors of market attraction, regulatory bodies and status of laws and regulations.

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This paper examines the historical development of Operations Research (OR) and represents different OR methods (methodologies) developed during its lifetime. Then, considering Thomas Kuhn’s paradigm model of scientific development as a basis for our work, the former and current status of OR are analyzed and the future trend is discussed.

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In the past four decades, new approaches and methodologies have been developed to solve unstructured and messy problems with various stakeholders. Among these methods, soft system methodologies, cognitive mapping, and strategic choice approach are specifically worthy to be heeded. The methods mentioned above, which have a precise structure and clear framework, are often categorized as soft operations research or problem structuring methods. Today, there is ample literature on soft research and it is taught in many operations research/management science courses of reputable universities. Methods of research on soft OR are rooted in soft system thinking and belong to the interpretative/learning paradigm. Nonetheless, assigning a clear and precise boundary between hard and soft OR techniques is not easily feasible, for most of these techniques– based on their application in different situations – can be classified as both hard and soft. The aim of this research is to investigate the origins and current position of soft methodology of operations research and probe into its theoretical basis. A comparison between the trend of OR in the US and UK clearly demonstrates the differences in soft and hard approaches. Generally, it can be concluded that soft and hard approaches of OR are complementary: soft methods are exploited in forming the structure (configuration) of a problem and hard methods are utilized in solving it.
 
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