Journal of Operations Management最新文献

Operational challenges arising from public utility obstacles are widespread globally, leading to production disruptions, decreased sales, and escalated logistics costs, ultimately contributing to a decline in firm labor productivity growth. Despite the criticality of this issue, there is a scarcity of studies in the field of operations management that investigate factors capable of mitigating these adverse impacts. Taking power outages and transportation obstacles as pivotal examples, our study aims to examine whether national culture can moderate the impact of public utility obstacles on firm labor productivity growth. To achieve this objective, we conduct an empirical analysis using a multi-country dataset from the World Bank Enterprises Survey, which covers detailed firm-level information across 28 industries in 41 countries, with a total of 17,227 firm-year observations. Our findings indicate that the detrimental effects of power outages and transportation obstacles on firm labor productivity growth are contingent on various dimensions of national culture. Specifically, cultural power distance and uncertainty avoidance would amplify the negative impact of power outages, whereas long-term orientation would alleviate this impact. Meanwhile, individualism and masculinity can help mitigate the adverse effects of transportation obstacles. Our results provide valuable insights for managers.

Millions of mom-and-pop nanostores dominate the grocery retail landscape in emerging markets. As nanostores are cash and storage space constrained, their suppliers tend to visit them with a high frequency, causing high operational costs. It is unclear if credit could mitigate such costs by allowing for a lower visit frequency. To investigate this, we conduct a randomized field experiment on nanostores that have not made recent use of supplier credit, with the objective to uncover how trade credits interact with the visit frequency and with the available storage space to shape shopkeepers' ordering behavior. We find that trade credits moderate the positive relationship between visit frequency and bi-weekly order size, with credit effects being salient under low frequency visits. Storage space, by contrast, does not directionally shape shopkeepers' ordering behavior. While trade credits may more than offset the negative effect of low frequency visits among adopting nanostores, credit adoption remains challenging, with only 24% of nanostores assigned to the credit condition actually adopting the credit. Remarkably, not a single credit line was defaulted over the entire duration of the intervention. In terms of assortment, trade credit is mostly used to acquire nanostores' core assortment of popular, low-price items with low physical volume. We contribute to the extant literature by showing that the gesture by the supplier to extend trade credit may only partly legitimize a reduction of the visit frequency.

The operations management community has recognized operational excellence as a contemporary arena comprising a full spectrum of research paradigms. However, there is a dearth of theoretical development aimed at understanding and unpacking operational excellence and its strategic implications for competitiveness. Much of the existing research focuses on siloed operational improvement practices rather than on inherent capabilities. In this paper, we conceptualize operational excellence from a capabilities perspective. We derive our findings from within- and cross-case analyses based on data gathered from four global banks with varying competitive positions. We posit the microfoundations of operational excellence in services by demonstrating how the cumulative aggregation of constituent capabilities leads to higher competitiveness in firms. We enhance the external validity of the emergent theory by showing its applicability in another service setting (healthcare). Our study demonstrates the importance of shifting managerial thinking from individual operational improvement practices to long-term capability building through the microfoundations of operational excellence.

Health promotion and disease prevention requires health systems address the patients' social needs using new care delivery models. Yet, research in this area has stalled for several reasons. We study a partnership model of care that couples clinical care delivered by primary care providers and social services delivered by community-based organizations, and its impact on patients' preventive health outcomes and behaviors. We use data from the Mid-Ohio Farmacy, which is a collaboration across the Mid-Ohio Food Collective (MOFC), a network of 650+ affiliated food pantries, and a large federally qualified health center (FQHC). The FQHC offers primary and preventative healthcare services across eight free clinics, which are co-located with the MOFC-affiliated food pantries. Patients were screened for food insecurity during their clinic visit and, if positive, were referred to the Farmacy. Compliers made at least one visit to the food pantry after referral, while noncompliers did not. Using difference-in-differences, we find that compliers had no discernible change in their body mass index (BMI, kg/m²), which we refer to as a BMI stabilization effect. Noncompliers' BMI increased after referral. High comorbid and high pantry use compliers experienced a significant reduction in their BMI and a marginally significant reduction in glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c, %). These patients had unique compliance behaviors, including greater search, frequency, and consistency of food pantry use. Travel costs suggests that high comorbid patients ascribed a greater value to the Farmacy program. In terms of primary care utilization, we find that compliers' clinic visit patterns after referral were consistent with the visit patterns observed in the food secure cohort, suggesting that the Farmacy program may have helped compliers address competing demands that are known to inhibit health behaviors.

Multiparty alliances (MPAs) are increasingly used to deliver large utilities infrastructure projects on-time, on-budget, and to specified quality. In theory, MPAs should help buyers to coordinate suppliers, enable concurrent scheduling, and create process innovations. On the other hand, these governance structures are inherently less stable than dyadic relationships due to their additional complexity and greater opportunities for free riding. We conduct a multi-source, longitudinal study, investigating how a buyer actively manages the dynamics between competition and cooperation during the formation of an MPA consisting of a lead organization and directional relationships between all partners. We contribute to MPA and coopetition literature by exploring cooperation and competition dynamics that are associated with the MPA structure that would largely be absent in dyads, and unpack the process by which a buyer orchestrates these dynamics by sequentially introducing new initiatives that seek to balance coopetition. MPAs have been recommended by governments and industry bodies as one solution for time and cost overruns in the utilities infrastructure sector, our study also provides guidance to buyers on the management of the alliance during the critical formation stage of the relationship lifecycle.

The majority of recent empirical papers in operations management (OM) employ observational data to investigate the causal effects of a treatment, such as program or policy adoption. However, as observational data lacks the benefit of random treatment assignment, estimating causal effects poses challenges. In the specific scenario where one can reasonably assume that all confounding factors are observed—referred to as selection on observables—matching methods and synthetic controls can assist researchers to replicate a randomized experiment, the most desirable setting for drawing causal inferences. In this paper, we first present an overview of matching methods and their utilization in the OM literature. Subsequently, we establish the framework and provide pragmatic guidance for propensity score matching and coarsened exact matching, which have garnered considerable attention in recent OM studies. Following this, we conduct a comprehensive simulation study that compares diverse matching algorithms across various scenarios, providing practical insights derived from our findings. Finally, we discuss synthetic controls, a method that offers unique advantages over matching techniques in specific scenarios and is expected to become even more popular in the OM field in the near future. We hope that this paper will serve as a catalyst for promoting a more rigorous application of matching and synthetic control methodologies.

Embedded in networks of relationships, firms are who they buy from and sell to. As a result, a firm's corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices can be influenced by CSR practices of its customers and suppliers—known as CSR diffusion. This study examines how CSR diffuses in a supply chain that encompasses a focal firm, its suppliers, and customers. Adopting a relational view, this research hypothesizes that a firm's CSR is influenced by its customer-base CSR differently than its supply-base CSR. By analyzing panel data consisting of 1972 firm-year observations integrated from multiple data sources, the results offer evidence for a positive impact of customer-base CSR and a negative impact of supply-base CSR on firm CSR. Interestingly, when customers and suppliers of a focal firm establish direct business connections (i.e., customer–supplier closure), the positive follow-suit effect of customer-base CSR is enhanced. In contrast, the negative free-ride effect of supply-base CSR is diminished. This suggests that a focal firm is more likely to embrace CSR practices from CSR-active supply chain partners when embedded in closed triads. This research shows the need to consider the directionality and closure of relationships in understanding the diffusion of voluntary, ill-defined, costly operational practices within a supply chain.

Hospital administrators are shifting care delivery models toward an approach that uses more caregivers in the form of mid-level providers (MLPs), such as nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and clinical nurse specialists. To date, however, healthcare operations management (OM) literature remains ambiguous about longitudinal empirical associations between mid-level providers and hospital costs, quality, and other performance measures. We analyze how the extent of MLP employment used by a hospital is associated with hospital operational outcomes, as reflected by hospital cost per discharge and Triple Aim Performance (TAP) efficiency metrics. Our findings indicate percent MLP usage is positively associated with efficiency metrics for hospital clinical quality, technical efficiency, and patient experience, but not associated with hospital costs. We also find percent MLP usage is associated with the likelihood that hospitals excel on all TAP metrics simultaneously. Post-hoc exploratory analyses suggest the associations exhibit differential outcomes across hospital efficiency quantiles, while sub-sample analyses motivate boundary conditions for some hypothesized MLP associations. We contribute to healthcare OM research by providing one of the first panel data analyses of MLPs, improving insights relative to extant work. By giving key stakeholders useful findings about outcomes associated with hospital staffing trends, our managerial contribution helps hospital administrators understand empirical consequences of the increasing use of MLPs.