The evolution of the intellectual structure of operations management—1980–2006: A citation/co-citation analysis

Citation analysis combined with a network analysis of co-citation data from three major operations management (OM) journals is used to reveal the evolution of the intellectual structure of the OM field between 1980 and 2006. This spans the entire time since the beginning of research journals specific to the field. Employing a bibliometric citation/co-citation analysis to investigate the foundations of the discipline enables a robust, quantitative approach to uncovering the evolution of research in OM. The study finds that the intellectual structure of the field made statistically significant changes between the 1980s, the 1990s, and the 2000s and evolved from a pre-occupation with narrow, tactical topics toward more strategic, macrotopics, including new research methods and techniques. A factor analysis identifies the 12 top knowledge groups in the field and how they change over the decades. Illustrations of the structure of the co-citations representing the field are generated from a spring-embedded algorithm that is an improvement over the standard multi-dimensional scaling (MDS) approach to illustrating the knowledge groups.     

Examining how advocacy groups build relationships on the Internet

• In 2006, the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA) became American law after brief Congressional discussions despite the public outcries from animal rights organizations. The AETA made it a federal terrorist crime to harm any animal enterprise financially, which could include legal forms of protests and boycotts. Members of the “Stop AETA” coalition failed to draw attention to the legislation. The relationship management theory of public relations provides a framework to determine how well the coalition members developed relationships with like‐minded individuals and the media. Results from a content analysis of the coalition members' Web sites revealed that nonprofit organizations and citizen‐advocacy groups attempted to develop relationships through a variety of strategies, including making the visit a positive experience, being open and transparent in their advocacy efforts, and providing access to coalition leaders. The results suggest that the coalition was unable to generate much news coverage for the issue because coalition members did not sufficiently reach out to cultivate relationships with journalists. Specific suggestions are provided for future advocacy groups to use the Internet to develop and cultivate relationships with key stakeholder groups.

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Emergency and routine MRO part buying

This article examines the effect of emergency vs. routine replacement part buying situations on the purchasing criteria used by maintenance and purchasing managers in process industries. Criteria included expediency, distance, part quality, price, and similar factors. Three sources were considered: OEMs, non-OEMs, and in-house production. The study found significant differences between criteria as a function of the buying situation. No significant difference was found between the criteria of maintenence managers and those of purchasing managers.     

Can you get what you pay for? Pay‐for‐performance and the quality of healthcare providers

Despite the popularity of pay-for-performance (P4P) among health policymakers and private insurers as a tool for improving quality of care, there is little empirical basis for its effectiveness. We use data from published performance reports of physician medical groups contracting with a large network HMO to compare clinical quality before and after the implementation of P4P, relative to a control group. We consider the effect of P4P on both rewarded and unrewarded dimensions of quality. In the end, we fail to find evidence that a large P4P initiative either resulted in major improvement in quality or notable disruption in care.     

Are key marketing topics adequately covered in strategic management?

Most business schools have a capstone course called strategic management. Students in these courses are often required to assess organizations’ functional areas of business, including marketing. Students determine marketing strengths and weaknesses of firms, and develop strategic plans for case companies. Students formulate strategies, make recommendations, and determine the expected marketing impact of those recommendations. Although marketing plays an important role in strategic planning, the present research shows that most strategic-management textbooks provide little to no marketing coverage. In study 1, a content analysis of six leading strategic-management textbooks reveals 10 marketing topics being discussed, although scantly. In study 2, a survey of 167 business students nearing graduation examines the relative importance of the identified topics in strategic planning. Findings of this research suggest that the capstone business course needs to be more integrative. Implications for business courses, faculty, textbook authors, as well as practicing marketers and managers are discussed.     

Exploring the influence of envy on service engagement

Consumer retention is central to service firm objectives and is often the focus of firm initiated activities. However, consumer-driven processes that operate independently of firm initiated activities also influence retention. By understanding the consumption goals of service consumers, management can encourage behavioural engagement with service offerings and improve retention outcomes. Positional services provide opportunities for social status enhancement (e.g. higher education) and attract consumers seeking the positional benefits offered. Service consumers compete for positional benefits and monitor their success relative to other service consumers via positional comparisons. Envy, an emotion with benign and malicious types, is experienced if the positional comparison with another service consumer is unfavourable and influences behavioural engagement. This study proposes and qualitatively tests a conceptual model linking positional comparison and envy to changes in consumers’ behavioural engagement with a service depending on the type of envy experienced. The findings support benign envy as a motivator for increased behavioural engagement with a service. The study also supports the existence of a ‘positional’ service category in which envy is an endemic emotional theme influencing behavioural engagement in these service environments. A two-tiered approach to the management of envy involving positional goal recognition and appraisal based tactics is recommended.     

Sequential clinical scheduling with patient no-show: The impact of pre-defined slot structures

This paper develops a sequential scheduling algorithm for consultation periods not divided into slots. Patients call a scheduler and request appointments with a specified provider. The scheduler provides the patient with an appointment time before the call terminates. In making the appointment, the scheduler cannot alter the appointments of previously scheduled patients. Service times are random and each scheduled patient has a probability of “no-showing” for the appointment. Each arriving patient generates a given amount of revenue, and costs are incurred from patient waiting and provider overtime. The scheduling method selects the calling patient's appointment time by minimizing the total expected cost. We prove that total expected cost is a convex function of appointment times and that the expected profit of the schedule is unimodal, which provides a unique stopping criterion for the scheduling algorithm. Computational studies compare this approach with no-show based sequential scheduling methods for out-patient clinics where a predefined slot structure is assumed. The new method yields higher expected profit and less overtime than when service periods are pre-divided into slots. Because slot scheduling is ingrained in healthcare, we use the model to design slot structures that account for no-show and service time variation.     

Environmental Innovations in Small and Medium Sized Enterprises

Supporting and accelerating the adoption and diffusion of environmental innovations amongst small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) is a major challenge to environmental policy makers. Research suggests that whilst SMEs possess high flexibility, their innovative capacity may be limited to incremental changes within their existing technology system and network. Twenty case studies examining the innovation adoption process in SMEs in four sectors and in five countries within the ENVIS project (commissioned by the EU) revealed great variety in factors driving this process. Findings indicate that this variation can be attributed to the character of the environmental innovation, the specific business opportunity, the regulatory setting and pressure experienced by the sector. Based on these findings an analytical framework is suggested, whereby the environmental innovative capability of SMEs is conceived as the result of an interplay between the competencies, the network relations and the strategic orientation of the company (the 'dynamic triangle'). This indicates that policy to support SME's adoption of environmental innovations has to take an integrated form, i.e. addressing and developing competence, networks and strategic orientation of SMEs simultaneously whilst remaining systemic and context sensitive.