We study the role of different contract types in coordinating the joint product improvement effort of a client and a customer support center. The customer support center's costly efforts include transcribing and analyzing customer feedback, analyzing market trends, and investing in product...

We analyze the efficacy of different asset transfer mechanisms and provide policy recommendations for the design of humanitarian supply chains. As a part of their preparedness effort, humanitarian organizations often make decisions on resource investments ex-ante because doing so allows for...

We consider contracting issues in the care of patients with chronic conditions within the principal-agent framework. The government, acting as a principal, contracts with several health care providers in an effort to maximise population health minus the cost. We consider the decision of whether...

We study production networks of automotive assembly plants to shed new light on the impact of flexibility on plant productivity. We observe that the contemporary manufacturing networks of automotive assembly plants of three US companies (Chrysler, Ford and General Motors) have become less...

Food waste is a severe economic and social problem. Restaurants contribute significantly to food waste because they face the classic trade-off between speed of service and leftover inventory, which is particularly crucial in the context of quick service restaurants (QSRs). To offer a high speed...

By using user generated content (UGC), specifically customer ratings, this paper disentangles the role of different dimensions of product quality in influencing consumer choice. We use a structural estimation model with endogenous prices and heterogeneous customer preferences to show that...

Technological advances enable new business models for heavy equipment manufacturers, replacing or augmenting ownership-based models with access-based consumption. An ever-increasing list of peer-to-peer sharing platforms (e.g., Trringo by Mahindra, Yard Club by Caterpillar, or COOP by Ryder)...

Problem Definition: In theory, all coordinating contracts are equivalent, however, the minimum order quantity (MOQ) contract is observed to be more popular in practice. We seek to understand whether decision makers as suppliers can perform better with the MOQ contract and, if so, why? We also...

Search models have traditionally been used to describe situations such as the development of new technology, job search, and the search for profitable investment opportunities. We address the problem faced by a firm that must conduct a search and therefore contemplates outsourcing that process....

Problem definition: The premise of this paper is that labor malpractice is not solely a corporate social responsibility and human resources issue; rather, its incidence is critically driven by operational decisions. We thus develop and test hypotheses to identify key operational drivers of labor...