Calls for Papers

Special Issue on Operations Management for Developing Economies

Submission deadline is June 1, 2026

Introduction

According to the International Monetary Fund, 152 countries—home to approximately 6.87 billion people—are classified as emerging and developing economies (International Monetary Fund, 2023)¹. Despite this, much of the research published in our top journals remains focused on industrialized nations. Emerging and developing economies, home to over 85% of the global population, remain underrepresented in top OM journals.

This special issue aims to expand the field by advancing what we term Development Operations Management (DOM)—a subfield akin to development economics. DOM focuses on designing and implementing strategies, policies, and solutions to enhance economic prosperity and industrial competitiveness in resource-constrained environments, aligning with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs). This vision is in part inspired by impactful studies conducted by renowned development economists and Nobel laureates, such as Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer, whose work has shaped evidence-based approaches to addressing economic and social challenges in developing countries.

Although developed and developing economies may encounter similar SC/OM issues, solutions effective in developed contexts often fail to translate due to structural differences. These include inadequate infrastructure, fragile institutions, political instability, currency fluctuations, and the prevalence of informal sectors. To tackle these complexities, it is vital to account for a range of local factors, including legal frameworks and foreign exchange risks, market dynamics, cultural norms, religious influences, and local content e.g., reliance on domestic goods, services, and labor. Broadening the scope of research may necessitate incorporating new theories, tools, and methodologies designed to address the unique challenges that firms in developing nations face. Such an approach ensures that OM research not only addresses diverse global contexts but also contributes to creating more inclusive and applicable solutions.

We seek to foster research that:

1. Extends OM theory to economies at the bottom of the pyramid,
2. Promotes economic prosperity in less-developed regions, and
3. Enhances OM practice by integrating innovations emerging from these contexts.

We welcome theoretical, empirical, and field-based research that focuses on the unique characteristics of developing countries—including market dynamics, institutional constraints, cultural factors, and local supply chains. Studies centered on multinational firms' operations in developing economies or humanitarian logistics fall outside the scope.²

Special Issue Editors

• Mahyar Eftekhar, Arizona State University, ([email protected])
• Serguei Netessine, University of Pennsylvania, ([email protected])
• Yanchong Zheng, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, ([email protected])

Submission Process and Timing

All submissions should be submitted via the M&SOM online submission system: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/msom. All submissions will be subject to the journal's standard peer-review process. Criteria for acceptance include originality, contribution, and scientific merit. For submission guidelines, please visit the journal's homepage to learn more at /page/msom/submission-guidelines.

Authors are encouraged to propose guest Associate Editors and provide a brief justification for their selection in their cover letter. Authors are also encouraged to choose at least one Associate Editor from the current list available at /page/msom/editorial-board. Furthermore, authors wishing to have a check on scope fit, are welcome to submit a confidential extended abstract (no more than one page) to the special issue editors.

Timeline:

The estimated timeline of this special issue is as follows:

• Deadline for submission: June 1, 2026
• First-round decision and feedback: September 1, 2026
• Second-round submission (for those papers invited to revise): March 1, 2027
• Final decisions (subject to minor revisions): June 1, 2027

We look forward to receiving your submissions.

Reference

International Monetary Fund (2023) Groups and aggregates information. https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/weo-database/2023/April/groups-and-aggregates.

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¹It includes Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Armenia, Aruba, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belize, Benin, Bhutan, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Brunei, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Chile, China, Colombia, Comoros, Costa Rica, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Dominica, Dominican Republic, East Timor, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Gabon, Gambia, Georgia, Ghana, Grenada, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Ivory Coast, Jamaica, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kiribati, Kosovo, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Marshall Islands, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mexico, Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Nauru, Nepal, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, North Macedonia, Oman, Pakistan, Palau, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Qatar, Republic of the Congo, Romania, Russia, Rwanda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, Sao Tome and Principe, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, Somalia, South Africa, South Sudan, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Syria, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Thailand, Togo, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu, Uganda, Ukraine, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Venezuela, Vietnam, Yemen, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

²Due to differences in scope, stakeholders, constraints, and objectives, DOM is distinct from the subfield of humanitarian logistics, which focuses on the supply chains of international organizations serving the poor in extremely low-income countries.

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M&SOM Special Issue on Responsible Retail Operations

Deadline for submissions: August 1, 2025

Retail, defined as the activity of selling goods or services directly to the end consumers, is among the largest employers and largest industry sectors in both developed and developing economies. Research in retail operations has grown tremendously over the last two decades since the initial seminal work by Fisher et al. (2000). Since then, the retail landscape has changed enormously, specifically because the development of online and on-demand retail. This development has been characterized in a review of 20 years of research in this journal (Caro et al. 2020). Research in operations management has followed this change in industry structure, with both modeling and empirical papers studying a wide variety of retail formats and retail channels. However, with little exception, the focus of these studies is more or less entirely on profit-maximizing objectives of the retailer, without much attention to considerations of sustainability and social responsibility.

Within the wider scope of responsible operations, retail has an important and visible role to play that has received increasing attention in the society at large. This role relates to problems such as, but not limited to:

• waste in food, apparel and electronics retail,
• labor conditions in stores and delivery operations,
• carbon emissions generated by highly responsive online or on-demand retail operations,
• the role of retail stores in the livability of rural communities,
• the presence of food deserts and food banks in low-income urban communities,
• the subsistence role of retail stores in developing countries and communities,
• increasing concerns with regard to data privacy such as face recognition in stores or data tracking online.

We strongly believe that it is the role of academic research to address the wider scope of responsible operations in retail, beyond the mere profitability of companies and business models in the sector. With this special issue, we call for innovative and impactful research that advances the theoretical and empirical understanding of responsible retail operations, and provides managers and educators with tools and insights to deploy more responsibility in retail operations. We are open to any research methods, including theoretical, empirical and behavioral work.

For a paper to qualify, two conditions need to be met:

1. The outcome variable/objective function needs to include a responsible metric, i.e., it is not enough to have a traditional cost/profit outcome variable/model that evaluates the effects on a responsible outcome, or a traditional cost/profit outcome variable/model that is set in a setting where responsible outcomes play a role.
2. The setting must be retail, defined as a directly consumer-facing activity, with the end-consumer (households or individuals) paying for a product or a service. In this definition, we decide to include not only physical stores and online retail for physical products, but also restaurants, banks, airlines, amusement parks, etc., but decide to exclude healthcare services.

Special Issue Editors

• Jan C. Fransoo, Tilburg University ([email protected])
• Dorothee Honhon, University of Texas at Dallas ([email protected])

Submission Process and Timeline

All submissions should be submitted via the M&SOM online submission system: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/msom. All submissions will be subject to the journal’s standard peer-review process. Criteria for acceptance include originality, contribution, and scientific merit. For submission guidelines, please visit the journal’s homepage to learn more at /page/msom/submission-guidelines.

Authors wishing to have a check on scope fit, are encouraged to submit a confidential extended abstract to the special issue editors before January 1, 2025. Scope check requests after this date may not be accommodated.

• Deadline for submissions: August 1, 2025
• First-round decisions and feedback: November 1, 2025
• Second-round submission (for those papers invited to revise): May 1, 2026
• Final decisions (subject to minor revisions): September 1, 2026

We look forward to receiving your submissions.

References

Caro F, Kök AG, Martínez-de-Albéniz V (2020) The future of retail operations. Manufacturing & Service Operations Management 22(1):47–58.
Fisher ML, Raman A, McClelland AS (2000) Rocket science retailing is almost here—Are you ready? Harvard Business Review 78(4):115–123.