Editorial Statement—Operations Management

OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT

Vishal Gaur, Cornell University

Victor Martínez-de-Albéniz, IESE Business School

Jeannette Song, Duke University

Jayashankar Swaminathan, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

The Operations Management Department of Management Science publishes research in established and newly emerging areas of operations management. Examples of established areas include process design and improvement, production planning, quality management, inventory management, supply chain management, logistics, services operations, and project management. Examples of emerging areas include additive manufacturing; automation, such as self-guided vehicles; digital technologies, such as blockchains and Internet of Things; emerging market operations; homeland security; humanitarian operations; machine learning and artificial intelligence; marketplaces, platforms, and the sharing economy; and sustainable and responsible operations. The department particularly seeks to promote research in emerging areas and using new methodologies.

Research papers could address operational questions from diverse perspectives, such as those of line workers, operations managers, C-suite executives, third-party providers, or policymakers. We encourage studies related to different organizational contexts, such as private, public, or nonprofit sectors. Research articles pertaining to industry-specific studies and those evaluating innovative business models are also encouraged.

The department also welcomes interdisciplinary work at the interface of operations with other disciplines, such as economics, finance, healthcare, innovation, marketing, organizational behavior, and strategy. Such manuscripts would be judged based on their contributions to the field of operations management. For example, a paper on healthcare operations would be expected to have a significant operations relevance and implication for it to be considered by the department.

Research papers should seek to provide substantive academic contributions and practically relevant insights and algorithms. We expect manuscripts to be of interest to a broad audience in operations management and, ideally, beyond. Thus, the contribution of amanuscript will be evaluated based on whether it delivers novel and relevant insights to theory and practice or solves important operational problems.

The department encourages all types of research methodologies—analytical, empirical, and behavioral. Successful analytical papers will use sound modeling techniques or creative algorithms drawn from the fields of mathematical optimization, stochastic processes, statistics, simulation, and game theory. In empirical research, the range of methodologies and datasets has been expanding rapidly. A successful empirical paper will have an appropriate research design, use sound statistical analysis, and relate its research questions and methods to operations management theory of interest. A successful behavioral operations paper will have theory and experiments or field-based research drawing on operations management and applications of behavioral economics and decision analysis in operations. Ideally, authors should aspire to validate their models, the insights, and the algorithms. Rigorous execution is necessary, but is not sufficient for publication.

The department welcomes both regular-length and Fast Track submissions; see the editor-in-chief’s statement for information on Fast Track manuscripts at https://pubsonline.informs.org/pb-assets/FastTrack-1547827885703.pdf.