Behavioral operations management
This research focuses on the effects that cognitive biases and human foibles, emotions and aesthetic preferences have on decision-making within operations management contexts. Niranjan’s doctoral dissertation investigated inventory decision-making behavior in supply chains with a focus on Bullwhip effect. An extension of his 2011 paper in Decision Sciences, titled “An Alternative Theoretical Explanation and Empirical Insights into Over ordering Behavior in Supply Chains” is currently under progress. This research investigates the buyer and supplier’s strategic interaction resulting in overordering. The methodologies used are lab experiments and field case studies. Sample research: Crying Wolf And a Knowing Wink: Bilateral Information Discounting in Dyads (prospective Phd students/interns are encouraged to refer to this) Departmental Thought Worlds (DTW)
This research stream investigates how organizational roles influence individuals’ perceptions of their work environment. Different departments end up having different world views and we seek to understand what detrimental and perhaps beneficial outcomes this can have, including silo thinking, more arguments (for better or for worse), and eventually operational-level and financial outcomes, and propose what organizations can do to improve things. Service Triads
This refers to the triadic relationship wherein the client firm serves the consumer through a third party service provider (vendor). We proposed this idea in a 2008 paper in Journal of Services Research, titled “Client-vendor-end user triad: a service quality model for IS/ITES outsourcing”. This stream of research saw a revival recently, with a call for papers for a special issue on this topic in Journal of Operations Management. We are currently developing taxonomy of service triads, to classify the myriad of service triads existing in business into meaningful groups. Another stream of research is investigating supply chain risk management issues specific to service triads. The methodology is qualitative research. |