Holding North: Recognizing identity and advancing contribution in operations management

Across universities, agencies and corporate institutions, attention is often drawn to the value of interdisciplinary translational research. For good reason. Interdisciplinary approaches can provide the means by which to accomplish the most impactful and practical of academic, social and commercial advancements. They imply a capitalization on integrative problem-solving, benefiting from the insights of various perspectives and knowledge bases. While motivating and coordinating such collaborations can be challenging, at the core of the argument for interdisciplinary effort is the presumption that individual disciplines bring unique value to the table. Just as interdisciplinary research cannot exist without unique disciplinary contributions, individual disciplines have no hope of advancing their unique contributions without a clear understanding of their identity relative to other disciplines. In other words, they need to know and hold-to their own ‘true North.’

Although the Journal of Operations Management (JOM) is open to diversity in empirical approaches, methods, and epistemologies, the journal's Aims and Scope are clear in articulating that at the core of the work that JOM aims to publish is empirical research motivated by relevant operations management problems. Indeed, historically, the journal has published everything from ethnographic work to econometric studies of secondary data. It has showcased interview-based field work, case studies, field and lab experimental work, as well as intervention studies. Developmentally, the work has ranged from exploratory research reporting new regularities to formal testing of established hypotheses.

Good research design would have us assemble the data required to develop, test, and refine our hypotheses or to answer our research questions. Recent developments in information technology and governmental reporting requirements, however, have created a wealth of data, to the point that it is now sensible for researchers to consider how to leverage it. At the same time, this availability of easily accessible data, together with the desirability of interdisciplinary work, has yielded an increasing number of submissions out of the journal's scope. While we recognize the potential usefulness of these data to explore and expand the boundaries and interfaces of Operations Management with other disciplines, we believe it is important to remind ourselves of our own ‘true North.’

The identity of the Operations Management discipline can occasionally appear nebulous to those outside the field. Though supply chain disruptions have made numerous headlines in the recent years, the field hasn't benefited from the many decades of notoriety and personal exposure that other management fields have. Adults with experience filing taxes, maintaining bank accounts, applying for and paying off loans, and investing for retirement all have some sense, as skewed as it may be, of disciplines such as Accounting and Finance. We are daily inundated with advertising efforts, by mail, robocalls, highway billboards and custom targeting on our various screens. Most of us think we know what the Marketing discipline is about, again regardless of how off that impression may be. Operations Management (OM) is, notably, a somewhat different story.

We regularly engage in processes that transform inputs, though we do not always think deliberately about how these processes can be made more effective, with the interest, say, of greater efficiency in yielding still more useful outputs. We often simply do not have the discretion to consider process changes. Often the processes we engage in are incidental and not sufficiently repeated or robust to changing conditions, so the perceived benefits of attempting to improve these are far lower than the costs of their undertaking. Similarly, we are often exposed to processes that are managed by others, but for which we have very limited transparency into the specific mechanisms, costs, structures, and inputs other than those that we carry with us. In short, we are surrounded by processes, but the how and why of managing these is almost always obscured.

We face the same burden as OM researchers. As a field, we fully recognize that other business disciplines fundamentally rely on enhancements and innovations in the processes that generate existing and new goods and services. At the same time, certain disconnects exist. Notably, we have long observed the ready availability of financial data (often purchased by business schools), leveraged by our research colleagues in Finance. We have also witnessed an explosion in the wealth of data emerging from the use of the new guidelines and reporting requirements for environmental, social and governance (ESG) context, as well as consumer data flowing out of mobile applications in support of large-scale empirical analyses of Marketing and Information Systems researchers. In contrast, researchers in the field of Operations Management often find themselves with relatively limited visibility into the kinds of process details that are core to our interest in helping our field advance. For a discipline that has deep associated roots with industrial design and modeling, it can be frustrating for researchers trained in advanced analytics, in this age of ‘big data,’ to feel as if their empirical hands are tied, relatively speaking.

The implications are worth delving into. In the following section, for illustration purposes, we focus on the use of consumer preference and consumer behavior data in OM. The elements and arguments presented there, however, also apply to the other data contexts described above (e.g., financial, transactional, ESG).

What's one path of recourse to address this dissonance? Use the same kinds of abundant financial or consumer data that other disciplines have made the most of in recent years. After all, why not? On the surface it does at least appear that something of a drift towards consumer orientated research has taken place over the last two decades of OM research. Figure 1 depicts the percentage of published articles containing references to consumers in their discussions. This percentage has grown at a 0.7% average annual growth rate (AAGR) since the year 2000.

Excluding papers that reference ‘consumer’ only as a modifier, for example, ‘consumer goods’ or ‘consumer products,’ has little impact on these numbers. Such cases account for about 1% out of the 7% of JOM articles-to-date referencing ‘consumers,’ and less than 0.2% of the 16% of MSOM articles-to-date referencing ‘consumers.’ While some of this growth may be attributed to a lagged impact of growing interest in the service space, starting in the late 1990's, trends in reference to consumers are also largely resilient to the exclusion of reference to consumer services (5.6% per decade growth in reference to consumers when excluding papers referencing ‘service,’ versus original 5.8% growth per decade). While these numbers are merely cursory signals, the shift over the last 23 years is consistent and striking.

There is nothing fundamentally wrong with considering the role of consumers in OM research. Nor is there anything wrong with acquiring and exploring data on consumer behavior if an OM research question is at the core of that inquiry. OM research can be greatly informed by data specific to consumer action, as well as by financial performance data for that matter. Surely, we can benefit from inquiries at the intersection of OM and other disciplines, just as they can benefit from such interfacing work. However, if we are to claim that we are doing OM research, at some point we actually need to be doing OM research. We cannot attempt to do consumer behavior or financial performance analysis devoid of a specific OM research motivation and core. Think about the consequences for what we ‘bring to the table’ if we allowed ourselves to do so.

Unfortunately, from an editor's perspective, based on the numerous articles that are desk rejected merely due to a lack of fit to the OM discipline, it does occasionally feel as if this drift towards convenient non-OM related data and research is exactly what is happening. It can be hard to ignore, and frankly it would be irresponsible to do so. This drift isn't limited to big-data type studies. We also see it happening across a range of approaches to acquiring data for analysis and apparent research question foci. One of the most immediately recognizable is the collection of data from individuals as, or ‘playing’ the roles of, consumers. Unfortunately, and returning to our earlier concerns, it should be clear that the choices made by a consumer population, and the factors that can influence such choice, while providing important inputs to value-adding processes, do not in themselves provide insights into the mechanisms within these same processes, of interest to OM. Studies into consumer behavior often push right up against the door of Operations Management without venturing in. As tempting as it may be to conduct a study of consumer behavior outside of an operational process, such a study is not research into an operational process.

There are of course limited but notable exceptions that sit at the intersection of natural consumer roles and operational relevance. Perhaps the most significant of these presents itself when consumers play extended roles as co-producers in the process of transforming inputs (some of which they themselves provide) into outputs. Examples include the consideration of consumers engaging with workers, or automation, to not merely select but co-manage or co-process the creation of goods and services. This can involve the design of customized solutions in settings from manufacturing to healthcare, to hospitality; or entail the facilitation of steps that add-value by their own actions in-process. They can also include the role that individuals play within operational substructures such as the queues that arise from the design of operational processes. When consumers respond to process performance and choose to renege from their role in the process by leaving the queue, that clearly has implications for subsequent process performance. They are responding to process signals, but also co-impacting the ability to deliver results (to others) in the system (c.f. Maister, 1985, Allon & Kremer, 2019, Ilk & Shang, 2022). Here we are less interested in whether consumers are attracted to short lines, and more interested in the feedback mechanisms that form a connecting thread across performance, response/action and subsequent operational dynamics.

In all of these cases, it should be clear that we always retain a central presumption. Specifically, we hold that the impact of the consumer on the process, subject to various conditions, can only yield a partial picture of the role of such conditions. The same would apply if we were talking about managerial decision-makers who otherwise might operate only on the periphery of OM (HR managers, senior strategy managers, etc.). Implied in our emphasis is the presence of other truly-embedded operational actors, human or otherwise, process structures and dynamics. If we fail to consider at least some of the critical operational agents and pathways in a given process, then we are missing out on some critical opportunities for informing our discipline. Certainly, we can't study every aspect of many processes, but we should rationalize what we are prioritizing as we attempt to advance the OM field.

Does this mean that we should simply not consider consumer behavior or preferences in our work? No, but the manner in which we do so should be thoughtful with respect to our disciplinary focus. If a customer is, for example, serving in the capacity of a supplier or co-producer of goods or services, they are clearly taking on instrumental roles that impact the performance of the processes managed. Such consumers are co-responsible for operational performance, and understanding how to manage those co-producers is just as critical and understanding how to manage other human capital and physical assets. Understanding how they manage their aspect of the process should similarly be of interest. Wonderful examples of the study of consumers in these capacities include that of Simpson et al.'s (2019) research into individual recycling decisions within the context of circular supply chains and the work of Rao et al. (2014) investigating operational drivers (e.g., delivery consistency) in driving consumer returns. In the latter case, consumers are responding to operating process effectiveness but also ostensibly informing co-producer (co-supplier) roles.

This is also, certainly, not an attempt to draw specific attention to what makes for appropriate consumer-behavior research within OM. The same logic, understanding the role of X, within or interfacing with what our discipline is responsible for advancing and developing, applies to the co-consideration of information systems, financial decision-making and performance, accounting practice, strategy, organization, and human resource management. Each of these are disciplines whose expertise, whose personnel, and, yes whose data, we should be engaging with when OM research question motivate us to do so. Our disciplines' focus on processes compels us to consider the manner in which these processes are designed, deployed, executed, maintained and enhanced. Each aspect is replete with human agents with a range of experiences and responsibility that extend beyond OM. In other words, processes that we study are full of non-OM agents and enablers (more co-producers of a sort). While non-human agents are playing an increasing role as co-producers as well, certainly in some settings much more than in others (Angelopoulos et al., 2023), human decision-makers and actors remain core to value-added transformations.

If we are to prioritize our research, it should be on these process-embedded individuals (regardless of what their professional backgrounds may be), more so than those parties only on the periphery. Our aim should be to understanding the way they make decisions and engage with other agents within key processes, with physical assets, with guidelines and rules, with best practices. It is the totality of interactions within these socio-technical systems that constitute the mechanisms by which transformation takes place. To do so we need to rationalize our discipline's bandwidth, allowing inquiries into activities outside of operational processes to be studied by our neighboring disciplines. With such rationalization, we will continue to have plenty of work ahead of us; but it will be the ‘right’ work – Not ‘low hanging fruit,’ but inquiries that we are uniquely positioned to tackle. It is these very kinds of inquiries that make our contributions to our field valuable and allow us to advance our dialogues with both the academy and practice. Such inquiries are our North, so let's hold to them as best we can. We may not be able to foresee all the future possibilities for advancing research and understanding in our chosen field, but we can certainly work to avoid committing inordinate resources to efforts that are clearly far field from that destination.

Both the domain and the range of OM are expansive. They include not only the inputs and drivers of the processes to achieve the transformation, but also the ancillary systems the support the transformation process (Browning, 2020). Fundamentally, as Browning puts it, OM can be viewed as the study of how individuals and organizations have been, are and could be “managing work to produce valuable results” (2020, p. 498). While one can imagine many forms of work managed, the how of that management is critical in that it draws our attention to process. Certainly, inputs and outputs matter, but the specific path of transformation is key. Along that path, and across contexts, there are many gaps in our understanding and many unanswered questions. Unexplored alternatives and tributaries to existing process paths continue to emerge as new conditions, technologies, skills, and policies arise. Let's make sure that we are not overlooking important process paths to explore in our research; paths that add-value and for which practice and future inquiry truly can benefit from. Let's be cautious to not be drawn into the most immediate and shiny exit sign. The journey is where insights reside and requires far more than just stepping up to the door or finding the closest place to plant a flag.