When managing a project with uncertain completion time and unobservable contractor's work rate, self-interest can create conflicts between the project manager and the contractor leading to actions that reduce the profits of both. We first investigate how the concept of supply contract...

When managing a project, a firm must evaluate multiple strategic factors and operational issues before deciding which tasks to keep in-house and which to outsource. We focus on one operational aspect of this evaluation process by examining the impact of different sourcing decisions of project...

This paper presents ways for senior researchers to help future doctoral students in Operations Management (OM) to overcome multiple challenges in the following: (a) conducting relevant research while demonstrating greater rigor, and (b) exploring multi-disciplinary research projects while...

As policy makers seek to draw lessons from the growth of Chinese manufacturing, we need to better understand the evolving strategies adopted by Chinese manufacturers since the economic reforms of the 1980s. Focusing on the apparel and electronics sectors, we look at how Chinese manufacturers...

When operating in a market with heterogeneous customers, a service firm (e.g., a car rental company or a hotel) needs to manage its capacity so as to maximize its revenue. To gauge the potential demand, a service firm often allows each customer to reserve a unit of service in advance. However,...

Motivated by a recent legislative discussion in the European Union about providing European patients with the freedom to choose the country they receive treatment, we use a queueing framework to analyze a game-theoretic model that captures the interactions among the patients, the providers, and...

In the design of procurement contracts, cost sharing, wherein the contractor receives a fixed fee plus a fraction of his cost, is common when the cost for completing the project is uncertain. We determine the best cost-sharing contract between a risk-neutral project manager and a risk-averse...

Consider a supply chain that consists of a supplier and a retailer, who sells a single product to the customers over a short selling season. In this paper, we present a model in which the supply chain partners participate in two different programs: (1) the supplier and the retailer enter a...

We extend the linear programming (LP) model of deterministic supply-chain planning to take demand uncertainty and cash flows into account for the medium term. The resulting stochastic LP model is similar to that of asset-liability management (ALM), for which the literature using stochastic...

Marketing and operations are two key functional areas that contribute to the success of a firm. By acquiring and analyzing information regarding customers and competitors, marketing can be viewed an external-focused functional area that determines "what" kind of products (or services) a company...