Journal of Operations Management

doi: 10.1002/joom.1194pmid: N/A

Wang, Lei; Zhang, Chun; Narayanan, Sriram

doi: 10.1002/joom.1235pmid: N/A

Trust is considered essential to interfirm knowledge acquisition across borders. However, recent studies indicate that interfirm collaboration can thrive even in low trust situations. This study proposes that low trust can facilitate supplier knowledge acquisition (SKA) across borders if it is aligned with the other party's trust. Rather than high trust from a single party, trust congruence—similar levels of trust from buyers and suppliers regardless of their levels—may be more predictive of successful knowledge acquisition across borders. We further propose that different types of trust congruence have distinct effects on SKA across borders. Last, we propose that the influence of trust congruence on SKA is conditional on the presence of effective knowledge appropriability mechanisms (KAMs) and institutional distance between buyer and supplier home countries in cross‐border transactions. Data are collected from 648 managers working for 162 matched dyads of manufacturing suppliers in China and buyers from 24 OECD countries. The findings support the propositions and suggest that supply chain managers should pay attention to aligning trust levels with their partners in cross‐border transactions, and especially do so when lacking effective KAMs and when buyers and suppliers are from similar institutional environments.

Roehrich, Jens K.; Kalra, Jas; Squire, Brian; Davies, Andrew

doi: 10.1002/joom.1237pmid: N/A

Multiple organizations working jointly on shared activities in inter‐organizational projects for a defined period of time are used increasingly to coordinate the supply of complex products, subsystems, and services across many industries. Despite the growth in inter‐organizational networks as an organizational form, scholars have only recently begun to identify how lead organizations orchestrate the coordination of multiple parties with disparate goals, responsibilities, and capabilities. Prior work offers limited insights into the choice of network governance forms, and how coordination is undertaken by the network orchestrator to govern these networks. We conducted a longitudinal study of four networks to deliver vital services into a large project. We identified how the choice of network governance form was based on task complexity. A shared governance form was chosen for networks developed to deliver routine services, whereas a lead organization governance form was chosen for networks set up to deliver complex services. However, findings showed that the selection of an appropriate governance form was not sufficient for ensuring high performance. The network orchestrator's mode of coordination (formal or informal), the intensity of coordination (active or passive), and fit with the form of governance form (shared or lead organization governed) was important in driving performance.

Lee, Sangjoon; Shin, Hojung; Benton, W. C.

doi: 10.1002/joom.1238pmid: N/A

This study investigates the relationship between impulse buying and product shortages in the context of television home shopping. Home shopping networks adopt promotional tactics to pitch sales and even encourage consumers' impulse buying. Marketing and sales management often assume that home shoppers' impulse buying will increase sales and profits, not considering the possibility that a significant number of impulse purchases could be canceled or returned. In general, product shortages driven by consumers' impulse buying may create a phantom stockout condition whereas non‐impulsive consumers are deprived of purchasing opportunities while products are in the process of being canceled or returned. This is the first large‐scale empirical study that addresses the relationship between impulse buying and product shortages in a network retail context. Based on actual transaction data, a novel research plan is developed to measure the impact of consumers' impulse buying on the retailer's revenue and product shortages. The findings indicate that impulse buying may cause product shortages directly. We conduct a post hoc analysis to investigate the differences in the impact of impulse buying between newly introduced and existing products and between hedonic and utilitarian products. Based on the empirical findings, we provide managerial implications for home shopping network retailers.

Peng, Xiaosong (David); Ye, Yuan; Ding, Xin (David); Chandrasekaran, Aravind

doi: 10.1002/joom.1245pmid: N/A

Inadequate nurse staffing continues to challenge healthcare delivery in the United States. In this research, we undertake a fine‐grained, unit‐level analysis to understand the relationships between nurse staffing, nurse turnover, and pressure ulcers, the latter of which is a key nursing‐sensitive care quality indicator. We examine these relationships within two types of hospital units: intensive care units (ICUs) and medical‐surgical (MedSurg) units, which have unique patient mixes and needs. Using hospital unit‐level data between 2008 and 2017, we show that nurse staffing primarily affects nurse turnover in ICUs, and that the adverse effects of nurse turnover on care quality tend to be stronger in ICUs than in MedSurg units. These findings provide important theoretical insights into the varying roles of staffing, turnover, and quality across organizational units. The findings suggest that hospital administrators may prioritize staffing needs for ICUs over MedSurg units to maintain strong quality performance on measures such as pressure ulcers. Further, our study reveals that staffing requirements for ICUs may be inadequate compared with MedSurg units. Thus, there is a need to evaluate existing guidelines on ICU staffing.

Li, Jingyun; Bardhan, Indranil R.; Sethi, Suresh; Ring, W. Steves

doi: 10.1002/joom.1247pmid: N/A

The Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program imposes financial penalties on hospitals with excess readmission rates for various conditions, including coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery. While prior research has focused mainly on hospital‐specific factors and their impact on patient mortality, surgeon risk factors and patient outcomes, such as readmission risk, have received less attention. We study three drivers of CABG readmission risk—hospital and surgeon case volume, variation in surgeon volume, and surgeon familiarity with hospitals. Drawing on unique patient data sets of CABG surgeries spanning 3 years, we study the relationships between hospital and surgeon case volume, readmission risk, and postoperative length of stay (PLOS). We find evidence of an inverted U‐shaped relationship between case volume and readmission risk and a U‐shaped relationship with PLOS. Our results also indicate that surgeon volume variation moderates the relationship between surgeon volume and readmission risk, where readmission risk increases with greater variation in surgeon volume. We observe that the impact of surgeon experience on readmission risk at the focal hospital outweighs their experience at other hospitals. Our study has significant implications for hospital resource management as it highlights the role of surgeon and hospital experience in improving patient outcomes after CABG surgery.

Chen, Ji; Xu, Yifan; Yu, Peiwen; Zhang, Jun

doi: 10.1002/joom.1246pmid: N/A

We consider a budget hotel chain's revenue management problem of deciding how to dynamically allocate capacity to multiple segments of customers. Our work solves an industrial‐sized problem faced by practitioners, with the reality of implementation motivating us to develop a tailored reinforcement learning approach. Our approach proceeds in two steps. First, a recommended average discount is computed with a reinforcement learning algorithm. Then, the recommended average discount is turned into a capacity allocation through a linear program. This approach overcomes the challenges of characterizing demand and estimating cancellations, and it facilitates hotel managers' acceptance of the revenue management system. We implement this approach in the hotel chain in a pilot study and assess its effectiveness using synthetic control methods. Our approach improves the key operational performance measure—revenue per available room—by 11.80%. There is heterogeneity in how the pilot hotels improve their revenue per available room. Some mainly increase their occupancy rate, some mainly increase the average daily room rate, while others experience significant increases in both. Further analysis shows that our approach uncovers the individual sources of suboptimal performance in pilot hotels and correspondingly improves decision‐making. Our work demonstrates that a reinforcement learning approach for hotel revenue management is promising.

Azaria, Shany; Ronen, Boaz; Shamir, Noam

doi: 10.1002/joom.1234pmid: N/A

If there is some truth to the adage that justice must not only be done, but must be seen to be done, then surely it must be seen to be done in a timely manner. Yet court congestion and delays – which threaten to undermine the justice system – have become global phenomena with significant adverse implications for social welfare, economic development, and civil rights. This work describes an application of the Theory of Constraints (TOC) to the judicial system for the purpose of designing an intervention to alleviate court congestion – an intervention that won the 2012 Goldratt Foundation New Knowledge Award. In cooperation with the Jerusalem District Court in Israel, the judicial process was reviewed through the lens of TOC, and a set of operational changes was implemented to reduce case processing time. Data collected before and after this intervention indicate the potential of achieving lead‐time reduction by applying TOC to judicial environments.