Journal of Operations Management
0272-6963
1873-1317
Hà Lan
Cơ quản chủ quản: WILEY , John Wiley & Sons Inc.
Các bài báo tiêu biểu
Globalization results in both pressure and drivers for Chinese enterprises to improve their environmental performance. As a developing country, China has to balance economic and environmental performance. Green supply chain management (GSCM) is emerging to be an important approach for Chinese enterprises to improve performance, possibly on both these dimensions. Using empirical results from 186 respondents on GSCM practice in Chinese manufacturing enterprises, we examine the relationships between GSCM practice and environmental and economic performance. Using moderated hierarchical regression analysis, we evaluate the general relationships between specific GSCM practices and performance. We then investigate how two primary types of management operations philosophies, quality management and just‐in‐time (or lean) manufacturing principles, influence the relationship between GSCM practices and performance. Significant findings were determined for a number of relationships. Managerial implications are also identified.
This paper discusses the need for more research in operations management which is based on data from the real world. Tying operations management theory in with practice has been called for over a long period of time, however, many P/OM researchers do not have a strong foundation in gathering and using empirical data. This paper provides a starting point that encourages operations management researchers to use empirical data and provides a systematic approach for conducting empirical studies.
Empirical research can be used to document the state of the art in operations management, as well as to provide a baseline for longitudinal studies. It can also be invaluable in the development of parameters and distributions for mathematical and simulation modeling studies. A very important use for empirical data is in theory building and verification, topics which are virtually ignored in most P/OM research.
Operations management researchers may be reluctant to undertake empirical research, due to its cost, both in dollars and time and the relative risk involved. Because empirical research may be considered “soft,” compared with mathematical modeling, it may be perceived as risky. This paper attempts to provide a foundation of knowledge about empirical research, in order to minimize the risks to researchers. It also provides a discussion of analytical techniques and examples of extremely rigorous empirical P/OM research.
Although operations management researchers may not recognize it, all research is based on theory. The initial step in conducting empirical research deals with articulating the theoretical foundation for the study. It also includes determining whether the problem under investigation involves theory building or theory verification.
In the second step, a research design should be selected. Although surveys are fairly common in empirical P/OM research, a number of other designs, including single and multiple case studies, panel studies and focus groups, may also be used, depending on the problem being studied. Third, a data collection method should be selected. One method, or a combination of several data collection methods, should be used in conjunction with the research design. These include historical archive analysis, participant observation, outside observation, interviews, questionnaires and content analysis.
The implementation stage involves actually gathering the data. This section of the paper focuses on using questionnaires as the method of data analysis, although some of the concepts discussed may be applicable to other data collection methods, as well. A brief overview of data analysis methods is given, along with documentation of the types of data analysis which have been used in various types of empirical research conducted by operations management researchers over the past ten years. Potential outlets for publication of empirical P/OM research are discussed and their history of publishing such research is documented.
Underlying every step of the process are considerations of reliability and validity. Conducting empirical research without considering its reliability and validity is pointless, because the researcher will not be able to generalize from the results. This should be considered in each of the four stages listed in the approach described above.
A number of conclusions are discussed. These include the need for more empirical research and the need for P/OM researchers to become more critical readers of the empirical research done by others. Colleagues in the social sciences can be a valuable source of information about conducting empirical research. Industry contacts can be useful, as well, in pilot testing, finding industry sites and determining consensus on the definition of terms. Finally, researchers in operations management need to be more aware of the theory which underlies their work. Empirical research can be highly useful in both theory building and theory verification.
Lean production not only successfully challenged the accepted mass production practices in the automotive industry, significantly shifting the trade‐off between productivity and quality, but it also led to a rethinking of a wide range of manufacturing and service operations beyond the high‐volume repetitive manufacturing environment. The book ‘The machine that changed the World’ that introduced the term ‘lean production’ in 1990 has become one of the most widely cited references in operations management over the last decade. Despite the fact that the just‐in‐time (JIT) manufacturing concept had been known for almost a decade prior, the book played a key role in disseminating the concept outside of Japan. While the technical aspects of lean production have been widely discussed, this paper sets out to investigate the evolution of the research at the MIT International Motor Vehicle Program (IMVP) that led to the conception of the term ‘lean production’. Furthermore, the paper investigates why – despite the pre‐existing knowledge of JIT – the program was so influential in promoting the lean production concept. Based on iterating series of interviews with the key authors, contributors and researchers of the time, this paper presents an historical account of the research that led to the formulation and dissemination of one of the most influential manufacturing paradigms of recent times.
The partial least squares (PLS) approach to structural equation modeling (SEM) has been widely adopted in business research fields such as information systems, consumer behavior, and marketing. The use of PLS in the field of operations management is also growing. However, questions still exist among some operations management researchers regarding whether and how PLS should be used. To address these questions, our study provides a practical guideline for using PLS and uses examples from the operations management literature to demonstrate how the specific points in this guideline can be applied. In addition, our study reviews and summarizes the use of PLS in the recent operations management literature according to our guideline. The main contribution of this study is to present a practical guideline for evaluating and using PLS that is tailored to the operations management field.
This paper provides an in‐depth review of the different methods available for assessing the construct validity of measures used in empirical research. Construct validity pertains to the degree to which the measure of a construct sufficiently measures the intended concept (e.g., is free of measurement error) and has been shown to be a necessary component of the research process. In order to illustrate the steps required to establish construct validity, we drew upon empirical research in the operations management area of manufacturing flexibility.
A typical approach to studying capabilities in the operations management literature is to assess the intended or realized competitive operational performance and their contribution to business and organizational objectives. While it is crucial to identify the operational performance that helps create competitive advantage, it is equally important to understand the means for delivering the needed performance at the operational level. Drawing on the resource‐based view (RBV), we argue that routines are a critical source of operations capabilities and subsequently investigate operations capabilities by means of their underlying routines. Because a common problem to studying capabilities is the ambiguous and confusing definitions, we conduct an extensive literature review to address the semantic confusion among various definitions of capabilities and delineate it from other related terms. We identify improvement and innovation as two critical plant level capabilities, each consisting of a bundle of interrelated yet distinct routines. We then empirically measure the two capabilities as second‐order latent variables and estimate their effects on a set of operational performance measures. The results suggest that routines form internally consistent bundles which are significantly related to operational performance. This supports our notion of “capabilities as routine bundles” that are difficult to imitate and thus a source of competitive advantage.
Research related to the natural environment in operations management is still in its infancy. The relatively few studies to date have primarily emphasized environmental issues relating to process technologies, quality, new product development, and supply chain management. This paper reports on the work of a focus group of environmental and operations management researchers, which generated a broad framework useful for identifying fruitful research opportunities. This framework is structured along two dimensions: level of analysis and process of environmental improvement. Research areas identified by the focus group to be most promising subsequently were mapped onto this framework. Strong opportunities for building our understanding of environmental issues and improving practice are evident in the areas of manufacturing strategy, quality, supply chain management, and technology management. Research on intra‐ and inter‐firm diffusion of best practices, environmental technology investment and transfer, and measurement of environmental performance promises to lead to a more integrative view of environmental operations management.
Supply chains are increasingly vulnerable to catastrophic events such as hurricanes or terrorist attacks. This is not only true because firms are more exposed to catastrophes, but also the result of investments made in recent years to operate supply chains with fewer human and capital resources, especially inventory. Consequently, there is today less “slack” available in supply chains to deal with catastrophic events. Thus, proactively planning for these types of events should be a priority for supply chain managers. A catastrophic event has a very low probability of occurrence but has significant consequences if it does occur. The goal of this research is to develop a process to proactively plan for catastrophic risk events through an integration of diverse research streams related to the management of risk. In particular, the proposed process builds upon an existing risk analysis framework by incorporating an innovative methodology used by the insurance industry to quantify the risk of multiple types of catastrophic events on key supply chain locations.
This research utilizes the framework of transaction cost economics (TCE) to develop an understanding of how firms manage the costs and risks of offshore outsourcing of professional services. This research examines the perspectives of eight organizations through interviews with 10 high‐ranking supply management executives. The paper first explores the rationale for offshore outsourcing among the organizations studied. Using the tenants of TCE, this paper postulates that fixed costs of establishing the relationship dominate the variable costs of day‐to‐day transactions, and that organizations will not offshore outsource areas where there is high perceived degree of unmanageable risk. The paper expands on themes provided by TCE and offers some lessons learned, and guidelines for managing and controlling offshore outsourced services relationships.
This paper seeks to extend existing manufacturing system concepts and develop new structured knowledge about international manufacturing networks by analysing the networks, classifying the configurations and identifying the capabilities. The design and operation of international manufacturing networks is an increasingly important issue for transnational corporations faced with rapid changes in global market opportunity, competition and new managerial mechanisms. Four international manufacturing networks in mechanical and process industries are analysed and a number of conclusions drawn: first, a novel configuration map is proposed; second, key strategic capability parameters are identified; third, networking trends and their implications for configuration are discussed. Finally, the paper explores strengths and weaknesses of the particular methodology adopted in this research.