Journal of Operations Management

Publisher:: Wiley
Publication date:: 2021-02-01

ISBN:: 0272-6963

Issue Number

Latest documents

Judgmental selection of forecasting models
In this paper, we explored how judgment can be used to improve the selection of a forecasting model. We compared the performance of judgmental model selection against a standard algorithm based on information criteria. We also examined the efficacy of a judgmental model‐build approach, in which experts were asked to decide on the existence of the structural components (trend and seasonality) of the time series instead of directly selecting a model from a choice set. Our behavioral study used data from almost 700 participants, including forecasting practitioners. The results from our experiment suggest that selecting models judgmentally results in performance that is on par, if not better, to that of algorithmic selection. Further, judgmental model selection helps to avoid the worst models more frequently compared to algorithmic selection. Finally, a simple combination of the statistical and judgmental selections and judgmental aggregation significantly outperform both statistical and judgmental selections.
Does the meaningful use of electronic health records improve patient outcomes?
While Electronic Health Records (EHRs) hold the promise of improving patient outcomes, past research on their efficacy has yielded inconsistent results. In this study, we overcome several drawbacks of past research by examining not just partial versus full adoption, but the impact of meaningful assimilation of EHRs as mandated by the HITECH (Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health) Act. Detailed patient‐level data from acute‐care hospitals in California, coupled with relevant data from several other sources, is used to conduct our analysis. After controlling for self‐selection bias, our results show that overall length of stay (LOS) is reduced by 3%, on average, for all patients who undergo treatment at hospitals that are meaningful‐use assimilated, relative to patients at hospitals that have fully adopted EHRs. The magnitude of this reduction is increased for patients with greater comorbidity complexity and greater coordination complexity. In addition, we find an overall decrease in readmission. We do not find such benefits among full adopters of EHRs. Thus, our study provides empirical evidence that instead of merely adoption, assimilation of EHRs at a hospital‐wide level can improve the efficiency with which patients are treated, with benefits from such an assimilation being far more pronounced for patients with a greater degree of health complexities. These are important findings, because hospitals are struggling to deliver quality care to their sickest patients without severe cost overruns. Recommendations from our study point to a path forward in meeting this challenge.
Editorial Board
Assessing the exchange of knowledge between operations management and other fields: Some challenges and opportunities
Addressing a suspicion that the field of Operations Management (OM) draws substantially more knowledge from non‐OM journals than those journals draw from OM journals in return, we studied the citations of the top 30 research journals of interest to our field. We conducted citation analyses of the three oldest OM journals over three decades in comparison to the 27 other journals representing the fields of Management, Operations Research/Management Science (OR/MS), Marketing, Practice, and Engineering. We examined both the entire 30‐year period and then each decade separately. Our suspicions were confirmed—although citations from these 27 journals to these three OM journals have increased by a factor of 7 over the three decades, we in OM still cite these journals about twenty‐five times more often than they cite our journals, giving an indication of the knowledge development and flows among these fields. We then describe some challenges for the field of OM in providing more research knowledge to other fields but also some opportunities that OM should be able to capitalize on, such as our historic ties to practice and our escalating research in strategic and organizational issues.
Designing crowdsourced delivery systems: The effect of driver disclosure and ethnic similarity
Crowdsourced delivery is a service operations model that has proliferated in recent years, bringing unique opportunities and challenges to online retail operations. In particular, new technology enabled features, such as the disclosure of delivery drivers' identities, introduce a social dimension prior to delivery service encounters that might influence customers' service quality expectations and ultimately impact their attitudes towards the retailers. Building on premises of social identity theory, this research investigates effects of various crowdsourced delivery system designs related to driver disclosure and ethnicity on customers' attitudes towards the drivers and retailers. Using data from a scenario‐based experiment with 761 participants across two studies, we find that crowdsourced delivery designs that disclose drivers' identity increase customers' trust, satisfaction, and repurchase intentions only when customers perceive the drivers to be similar to them, particularly with regard to ethnicity. The designs that offer driver choice options are also found to be highly regarded by customers. In addition, the similarity effects of crowdsourced delivery designs differ depending on certain customer characteristics. Overall, our research shows crowdsourced delivery ‐ as a technology‐driven phenomenon ‐ may portend unexpected and challenging social dilemmas for operations managers. Our findings contribute to emerging research on the intersection of service design, technology management, and the sharing economy.
Editorial Review Board
Developing country sub‐supplier responses to social sustainability requirements of intermediaries: Exploring the influence of framing on fairness perceptions and reciprocity
Research on social sustainability in multi‐tier supply chains is limited. Specifically, we know very little about a) the micro‐processes involved in the way in which sub‐suppliers (i.e., first‐tier suppliers or sourcing agents) respond to the sustainability requirements imposed by their intermediaries; and b) the micro‐level antecedents that condition their responses. To address these gaps, we used a longitudinal multiple case study method to explore multiple intermediary – sub‐supplier dyads in South India's knitwear garment industry and drew upon constructs of behavioural economics. We found that the way in which intermediaries frame social sustainability requirements and their associated procedures influence both the way in which sub‐suppliers perceive the procedural fairness of those requirements and the way in which they thus reciprocate. When intermediaries frame social sustainability requirements as ‘opportunity’ and engage in various procedures perceived to be procedurally fair by sub‐suppliers, the latter reciprocate positively. Contrastingly, when intermediaries frame social sustainability requirements as ‘insulation’ and engage in various procedures perceived to be procedurally unfair by sub‐suppliers, the latter reciprocate negatively. Under the production‐dominant framing, sub‐suppliers exhibit positive reciprocity only related to processing production orders. Our analysis inductively generated propositions that emphasize the important role played by framing in shaping the perceptions of fairness held by sub‐suppliers towards social sustainability requirements and the reciprocity of the latter's responses to them.
Toward a theory of supply chain fields – understanding the institutional process of supply chain localization
When western multinational enterprises (MNEs) build end‐to‐end supply chains (SCs) to produce and distribute a product or deliver a service in emerging economies, the process is called supply chain localization. These companies encounter institutional environments with regulative, normative and cognitive characteristics very different from those in their home countries. SC localization uncovers and creates institutional voids; we argue that SC localization is a process of institutional change, requiring the MNE to build new institutional infrastructure. To the best of our knowledge, little is known about the institutional process of SC localization and its effects. We carry out a longitudinal case study to investigate SC localization of four MNEs in China. These MNEs are leaders of sustainable business practices in their industries, a distinction that highlights institutional voids in their SC settings. Based on the idea of fields in institutional theory, we build a mid‐range theory by introducing the notion of the supply chain field. Our study identifies and contextualizes the key elements of an SC field. It recognizes MNEs, government and semi‐government entities, and other participants as institutional actors who serve as architects and builders of the new SCs. We find that SC localization is an institutional process, taking place at both actor and field levels, where continuous ideation of new operations practices leads to structuring of the both the SC and SC field.
Managing responsiveness in the emergency department: Comparing dynamic priority queue with fast track
Emergency Departments (EDs) commonly face capacity imbalances and long wait times in a service system handling patients with different priorities. These problems are particularly important for low‐priority patients who often remain in the queue for extended periods. We investigate two distinct approaches to address these challenges: fast track (FT) and dynamic priority queue (DPQ). Traditionally, EDs have prioritized patients using an Emergency Severity Index (ESI), in conjunction with FT, to strictly or partially dedicate resources to different ESI patient classes. With our proposed DPQ, patients are prioritized using ESI and additional real‐time operational information about the patient, specifically the amount of accumulated wait time and flow time. Using an empirical simulation, we compare the impact of different resource allocation and prioritization approaches on patient length of stay (LOS), including the existing system at the ED, FT with strict and partial dedication and the possibility of shorter and less variable service times, and versions of the proposed DPQ using simple dynamic prioritization. Our main results are that: (i) the DPQ approach dominates the other approaches tested; (ii) for various ED sizes, FT with strict and partial dedication do not reduce average LOS of low‐priority patients without significantly increasing average LOS of high‐priority patients, unless service time mean and variance are reduced; (iii) DPQ using accumulated wait time or accumulated flow time improves performance. The results are robust to changes in the proportion of patients in each priority level. Overall, expanding decision making about patient prioritization from only considering the patient's clinical condition to also including operational data can improve performance dramatically, even without improved service times.
Performance implications of the fit between suppliers' flexibility and their customers' expected flexibility: A dyadic examination⋆
Although an increase in flexibility for firms usually entails further investments and higher operating overhead for their suppliers (Sheikhzadeh et al., 1998Koste and Malhotra, 1999), most studies have focused exclusively on the benefits derived from additional flexibility enjoyed by the buyer firms neglecting the impact on the financial performance of their suppliers (e.g., Malhotra and Mackelprang, 2012; Gligor, 2014; Mandal, 2015). To explore the complex supplier‐customer interplay, we introduce the concept of buyer‐supplier flexibility fit (i.e., the match between the level of flexibility the customer expects from its supplier and the supplier's level of flexibility) and explore its impact on the supplier's financial performance (i.e., ROA). We collected dyadic archival and survey data from 638 firms (319 supplier‐customer dyads) to test these relationships. Our results indicate that buyer‐supplier flexibility fit has a direct and positive impact on the supplier's ROA. Further, the strength of the relationship increases when firms operate in munificent and/or dynamic environments but does not change significantly in complex environments. The relationship also becomes stronger as the exchanged business volume increases between the customer and its supplier, and as the relationship progresses in age. In addition, our findings indicate that firms with perfect buyer‐supplier flexibility fit perform best, followed by firms with negative misfit (i.e., the supplier's level of flexibility is lower than its customer's expected level of flexibility), while firms with positive misfit (i.e., the supplier's level of flexibility is higher than its customer's expected level of flexibility) are the laggards. Interestingly, positive misfit has a stronger negative impact on suppliers' ROA compared to misfit in general and negative misfit. Key corresponding managerial implications are derived.