Operations
Management Project
For
the past 20 years, the field of production and operations
management (POM) has tried to establish itself as a discipline distinct
from operations research (OR), management science (MS) and industrial
engineering (IE). Sceptics argue that POM has failed to develop its own
body of literature, lacks a distinct intellectual structure and that
there is little appreciation of what it stands for. This series of
projects has studied in detail the development of the OM field from its
inception though to the present day by analysing all the OM specific
journals in their entirety.
The
study finds that the intellectual structure of the field made
statistically significant changes between the 1980s, the 1990s, and the
2000s and evolved from an occupation with narrow, tactical topics
toward more strategic, macro topics, including new research
methodologies and techniques. A factor analysis identifies the 12 top
knowledge groupings in the field, how they change over the decades, how
they differ among the journals, and how the journals in each decade
differ from the other journals in that decade
A
specific analysis of co-citation data from the Journal of Operations
Management was used to investigate the intellectual pillars of
Operations Management. The study identifies that the two pervasive
central themes of JOM are operations strategy and quantitative research
methods. These dominate the other central themes of the resource-based
view, new product development, time based competition, TQM, research in
OM, manufacturing flexibility, the case study method, supply chain
design and organisation re-design. Emerging research areas were
identified using faction analysis which revealed the relationship
between customisation and process choice, supplier connectivity,
loyalty and the measurement of multi-dimensional views of performance
as areas of growing interest. The study also shows that our growing
understanding of performance is based on extending and refining single
variable explanations into robust multi-dimensional models and this is
a feature which clearly distinguishes OM from its antecedents.
IJOPM
This
multiple stage study analysed the articles published in IJOPM for spans
of 4 years and then again later for a span of 10 years, and
demonstrates that the persistent central ideas of operations management
concern manufacturing strategy, with specific interests in strategy
typologies, best practices, and the resource based view. Other central
themes are performance measurement, the case study method, and process
management. The plotting of subfield trajectories shows that recent
studies are seeking a more subtle understanding of operations
management by considering its practice in relation to strategy, context
and resources. Emerging subjects within the field include supply chain
management, lean management systems, theory building from quantitative
data and sustainable resource limits to capability.
Another element of the study
employed simple non-parametric techniques
to show that the research agenda of European POM scholars differs
substantially from that of their North American counterparts, and argue
that such transatlantic differences may have exacerbated the
difficulties POM has experienced in developing as a respected academic
discipline.
POM
A bibliometric co-citation network analysis of the leading journal POMS identifies that citation patterns of publication titles show that POM has a bridging role in integrating ideas from several distinct disciplines. Particularly, general management, OR and strategy journals feature prominently alongside the OM specific journals. This suggests that strategy and management are central to OM which essentially relates to the firm rather than wider contexts and markets.
- “The Evolution of the Intellectual Structure of Operations Management—1980-2006: A Citation/Co-Citation Analysis,” with J. Meredith, Wake Forest University, Journal of Operations Management, (2009) Vol. 27, No.3, pp. 175-202.
- "Operations
Management Themes, Concepts and Relationships: A Forward Retrospective
of the
IJOPM," with R. Fitzgerald, International Journal of
Operations
and Production Management, (2006) Vol. 26, No. 11, pp.1255-75.
- “Is Production and Operations Management a Discipline? A Citation/Co-citation Study”, with C.Liston-Heyes, International Journal of Operations and Production Management, (1999) Vol. 19, No. 1, pp. 7-20.
- “Conceptualizing
the Field of Operations Management,” POM,
- “Defining
Production and Operations Management”, Conference Closing Plenary
Paper, Annual
Conference of the European Operations Management Association, EurOMA98,
Ver 9.08