Behavioral operations management: a blind spot and a research program

Katsikopoulos, Konstantinos V. and Gigerenzer, Gerd (2013) Behavioral operations management: a blind spot and a research program. Journal of Supply Chain Management, 49 (1), 3-7. (doi:10.1111/j.1745-493x.2012.03285.x).

Abstract

Behavioral operations management, or simply behavioral operations (BOps), aims at understanding the decision-making of managers and at using this understanding to generate interventions that improve the operation of the supply chain. To do so, BOps imports knowledge from a number of fields such as economics, psychology and other social and behavioral sciences. We point out a blind spot in this knowledge: In BOps, the heuristics that people use are typically, although not always, viewed as a liability. The issue with this view is that it does not explain when and in what way heuristics can be an asset. We propose, as a research program for BOps, uncovering the conditions under which the heuristics that supply chain managers use are an asset, as well as the conditions under which they are a liability. We briefly discuss some research on heuristics in BOps and show how the study of quantitative models of heuristics can complement it.

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Contributors

Author: Konstantinos V. Katsikopoulos

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