A Framework for Examining the Interface between Operations and Information Systems: Implications for Research in the New Millennium*

Even though much research has been published in operations and information systems, both functional areas find their roots in other disciplines. While operations management evolved from operations research in the 1960s, the field of information systems is of more recent vintage and traces its original roots to computer science. Both disciplines now naturally have come closer together as information and process-technology-based changes force manufacturing firms to become more efficient and customer focused. Market and technology-driven e-commerce initiatives that are likely to dominate business strategies in the future cannot be successfully achieved without a successful integration of operations and information systems. In this paper, we present a unifying framework that can be used to better understand the management of the functional interface between operations and information systems. We also categorize and highlight the contributions of the articles that appear in this special research focus issue. Finally, research directions that emerge from our understanding of this interface are outlined in an effort to stimulate further thinking and research that can advance our knowledge of this interface area.     

Nature or Nurture? Learning and the Geography of Female Labor Force Participation

One of the most dramatic economic transformations of the past century has been the entry of women into the labor force. While many theories explain why this change took place, we investigate the process of transition itself. We argue that local information transmission generates changes in participation that are geographically heterogeneous, locally correlated, and smooth in the aggregate, just like those observed in our data. In our model, women learn about the effects of maternal employment on children by observing nearby employed women. When few women participate in the labor force, data are scarce and participation rises slowly. As information accumulates in some regions, the effects of maternal employment become less uncertain and more women in that region participate. Learning accelerates, labor force participation rises faster, and regional participation rates diverge. Eventually, information diffuses throughout the economy, beliefs converge to the truth, participation flattens out, and regions become more similar again. To investigate the empirical relevance of our theory, we use a new county‐level data set to compare our calibrated model to the time series and geographic patterns of participation.     

The water is wide.

Trying to predict what cardiology will look like in 10, 25, or 50 years is an almost absurd act of imagination. Perhaps even more than most branches of medicine, it has been changing so fast that it is hard to recognize from year to year. When we contemplate the changes that cardiology and the rest of health care are facing, we know that none of these changes will ever be "just technical." They will all be deeply human, and each one will be very difficult for some people. As people and organizations, we all come to that point where we have to change. Where we are is not working, we can't go on like this, we have to do something different. After boldly setting off to go someplace new, after some basic work is done to escape the original presenting problem--we reach the Great River. This is a point at which small, incremental changes won't do and we truly need to see ourselves differently. There is no bridge, no easy way across. This is where we must gather our resources and courage, remind ourselves of why we came this far. Yet many of us don't, and settle for something comfortable rather than cross that wide, turbulent river.     

A personal formula for motivation.

Have you ever wondered why some colleagues or subordinates are outstanding in their work while others are less so? Training and experience are extremely important factors but, by themselves, they will not ensure outstanding performance. The pivotal factor that activates all others is motivation. And underlying motivation is the fact that we all have needs that we desire to have fulfilled and that we make choices regarding the course of action or strategy to fulfill these needs. As managers, we do not typically create the "products" of the organization but rather must rely on subordinates. It is incumbent upon us to obtain from our employees desired behavior that will fulfill organizational goals. Indeed, it has been asserted that "one of the most basic responsibilities of the health service organization manager [is] motivating constructive participation of other organization members."     

“年报”与“非典”的公告日效应:比较及含义

年报公告,是上市公司向投资者披露业绩和成长机会的重要事件。理论上讲,通过事件研究法应该可以检测出明显的"年报"公告日效应。但在中国证券市场上,有相当一些公司却不能检测出与逻辑期望相一致的公告日效应。对此,有人认为是由于投资者并不关心基本面的信息,因此不能及时对业绩信息做出反应,并在股票价格中有所体现。但我们猜测,也有可能是其它原因,比如年报信息的提前泄露。非典事件是一个没有信息泄露的事件,我们选择同一组样本,用非典事件做对照研究,试图找到有关信息泄露猜测的证据。     

Dependency of Crop Production between Global Breadbaskets: A Copula Approach for the Assessment of Global and Regional Risk Pools

As recent events have shown, simultaneous crop losses in different parts of the world can cause serious risks to global food security. However, to date, little is known about the spatial dependency of lower than expected crop yields from global breadbaskets. This especially applies in the case of extreme events, i.e., where one or more breadbaskets are experiencing far below average yields. Without such information, risk management approaches cannot be applied and vulnerability to extremes may remain high or even increase in the future around the world. We tackle both issues from an empirical perspective focusing on wheat yield. Interdependencies between historically observed wheat yield deviations in five breadbaskets (United States, Argentina, India, China, and Australia) are estimated via copula approaches that can incorporate increasing tail dependencies. In doing so, we are able to attach probabilities to interregional as well as global yield losses. To address the robustness of our results, we apply three different methods for constructing multivariate copulas: vine copulas, ordered coupling using a minimax approach, and hierarchical structuring. We found interdependencies between states within breadbaskets that led us to the conclusion that risk pooling for extremes is less favorable on the regional level. However, notwithstanding evidence of global climatic teleconnections that may influence crop production, we also demonstrate empirically that wheat production losses are independent between global breadbaskets, which strengthens the case for interregional risk pooling strategies. We argue that through interregional risk pooling, postdisaster liabilities of governments and international donors could be decreased.     

New governance for a new era: issues and challenges for integrating systems

In this second part of a two-part column, Dr. Ruffin provides greater detail on seven key factors that he believes will govern the operations of integrated systems. Successful systems, he says, will be those that attract and retain physicians, have disciplined governance, integrate care through sharing of information among system elements, conserve capital, ensure strategic growth, control costs, and are proficient at processing information. It is important to understand, he says, that, in the movement from a fee-for-service payment mechanism, in which the various elements of the health care field bill for their services independently and according to rules designed for their benefit, to an integrated system, in which such independence can only lead to chaos, very substantial changes will be required in the governance of our health care institutions and organizations.     

New governance for a new era: issues and challenges for integrating systems

In this first part of a two-part column, Dr. Ruffin introduces seven key factors that will govern the operations of integrated systems. It is important to understand, he says, that, in the movement from a fee-for-service payment mechanism, in which the various elements of the health care field bill for their services independently and according to rules designed for their benefit, to an intregrated system, in which such independence can only lead to confusion in information systems, very substantial changes will be required in the governance of our health care institutions and organizations. In the second part of the column, Dr. Ruffin will elaborate on the seven factors that must be considered in the transition.     

Cautious Expected Utility and the Certainty Effect

Many violations of the independence axiom of expected utility can be traced to subjects' attraction to risk‐free prospects. The key axiom in this paper, negative certainty independence ([Dillenberger, 2010]), formalizes this tendency. Our main result is a utility representation of all preferences over monetary lotteries that satisfy negative certainty independence together with basic rationality postulates. Such preferences can be represented as if the agent were unsure of how to evaluate a given lottery p; instead, she has in mind a set of possible utility functions over outcomes and displays a cautious behavior: she computes the certainty equivalent of p with respect to each possible function in the set and picks the smallest one. The set of utilities is unique in a well defined sense. We show that our representation can also be derived from a “cautious” completion of an incomplete preference relation.     

Keeping the "care" in managed care: the importance of the therapeutic relationship and psychosocial factors in the managed care setting

There is much truth in the adage that "the more things change, the more they stay the same." Nowhere does this seem more apparent than in health care where, amidst monumental reconfiguration, basic foundations of physician-patient relationships and attention to the impact of psychosocial factors on health and health care delivery remain as critical influences. While the importance of the therapeutic relationship and the influence of psychosocial factors in medical care has been clear in traditional systems of delivery, these factors may be even more critical in managed care systems. These emphases must be incorporated by design, however, and not left to default.     

Complements or Substitutes? Culture–Technology Interactions in Healthcare

The U.S. government recommends that hospitals adopt Computerized Provider Order Entry (CPOE) systems to improve the quality problems that plague U.S. hospitals. However, CPOE studies show mixed results. We hypothesize that CPOE effectiveness depends on the prevalence of patient safety culture within a hospital. Using organizational information processing theory, we describe how patient safety culture and CPOE enable healthcare organizations to better process information. Specifically, we posit that CPOE complements some aspects of patient safety culture and substitutes for others. Using ridge regression, we empirically test this proposition using data from 268 hospitals and multiple data sources. Results show that while CPOE complements the patient safety dimensions of handoffs and transitions, feedback and communication about error, and organizational learning, CPOE substitutes for the dimension of management support for safety, in the context of our dependent variable. As organizations work to implement new systems, this research can help decision‐makers understand how culture impacts such initiatives and account for culture when anticipating effects.     

Risk as Analysis and Risk as Feelings: Some Thoughts about Affect, Reason, Risk, and Rationality

Modern theories in cognitive psychology and neuroscience indicate that there are two fundamental ways in which human beings comprehend risk. The “analytic system” uses algorithms and normative rules, such as probability calculus, formal logic, and risk assessment. It is relatively slow, effortful, and requires conscious control. The “experiential system” is intuitive, fast, mostly automatic, and not very accessible to conscious awareness. The experiential system enabled human beings to survive during their long period of evolution and remains today the most natural and most common way to respond to risk. It relies on images and associations, linked by experience to emotion and affect (a feeling that something is good or bad). This system represents risk as a feeling that tells us whether it is safe to walk down this dark street or drink this strange‐smelling water. Proponents of formal risk analysis tend to view affective responses to risk as irrational. Current wisdom disputes this view. The rational and the experiential systems operate in parallel and each seems to depend on the other for guidance. Studies have demonstrated that analytic reasoning cannot be effective unless it is guided by emotion and affect. Rational decision making requires proper integration of both modes of thought. Both systems have their advantages, biases, and limitations. Now that we are beginning to understand the complex interplay between emotion and reason that is essential to rational behavior, the challenge before us is to think creatively about what this means for managing risk. On the one hand, how do we apply reason to temper the strong emotions engendered by some risk events? On the other hand, how do we infuse needed “doses of feeling” into circumstances where lack of experience may otherwise leave us too “coldly rational”? This article addresses these important questions.     

What do you know?

If you run an organization, what do you know? What could you know? What is obvious--what we take for granted--hides deeper, contradictory realities. Such simple assumptions as "The goal of management is to get things done by motivating people to do them" not only hide a deeper truth, they keep us from getting to what's true. There is no short road to leadership. It is long-term. It is about relationship, in the deepest sense. Leaders don't create energy and momentum, they harness the energy and momentum that already exists in the people that they hope to lead. They connect with people, and they get out of the way.     

Adverse Selection in Competitive Search Equilibrium

We study economies with adverse selection, plus the frictions in competitive search theory. With competitive search, principals post terms of trade (contracts), then agents choose where to apply, and they match bilaterally. Search allows us to analyze the effects of private information on both the intensive and extensive margins (the terms and probability of trade). There always exists a separating equilibrium where each type applies to a different contract. The equilibrium is unique in terms of payoffs. It is not generally efficient. We provide an algorithm for constructing equilibrium. Three applications illustrate the usefulness of the approach, and contrast our results with those in standard contract and search theory.     

Multi-objective simulation optimization using data envelopment analysis and genetic algorithm: Specific application to determining optimal resource levels in surgical services

Simulation is a powerful tool for modeling complex systems with intricate relationships between various entities and resources. Simulation optimization refers to methods that search the design space (i.e., the set of all feasible system configurations) to find a system configuration (also called a design point) that gives the best performance. Since simulation is often time consuming, sampling as few design points from the design space as possible is desired. However, in the case of multiple objectives, traditional simulation optimization methods are ineffective to uncover the efficient frontier. We propose a framework for multi-objective simulation optimization that combines the power of genetic algorithm (GA), which can effectively search very large design spaces, with data envelopment analysis (DEA) used to evaluate the simulation results and guide the search process. In our framework, we use a design point's relative efficiency score from DEA as its fitness value in the selection operation of GA. We apply our algorithm to determine optimal resource levels in surgical services. Our numerical experiments show that our algorithm effectively furthers the frontier and identifies efficient design points.     

Feedback Mechanisms,Judgment Bias,and Trust Formation in Online Auctions*

Online markets, like eBay, Amazon, and others rely on electronic reputation or feedback systems to curtail adverse selection and moral hazard risks and promote trust among participants in the marketplace. These systems are based on the idea that providing information about a trader's past behavior (performance on previous market transactions) allows market participants to form judgments regarding the trustworthiness of potential interlocutors in the marketplace. It is often assumed, however, that traders correctly process the data presented by these systems when updating their initial beliefs. In this article, we demonstrate that this assumption does not hold. Using a controlled laboratory experiment simulating an online auction site with 127 participants acting as buyers, we find that participants interpret seller feedback information in a biased (non‐Bayesian) fashion, overemphasizing the compositional strength (i.e., the proportion of positive ratings) of the reputational information and underemphasizing the weight (predictive validity) of the evidence as represented by the total number of transactions rated. Significantly, we also find that the degree to which buyers misweigh seller feedback information is moderated by the presentation format of the feedback system as well as attitudinal and psychological attributes of the buyer. Specifically, we find that buyers process feedback data presented in an Amazon‐like format—a format that more prominently emphasizes the strength dimension of feedback information—in a more biased (less‐Bayesian) manner than identical ratings data presented using an eBay‐like format. We further find that participants with greater institution‐based trust (i.e., structural assurance) and prior online shopping experience interpreted feedback data in a more biased (less‐Bayesian) manner. The implications of these findings for both research and practice are discussed.     

绿色供应链管理中有举报行为的政企博弈分析

研究绿色供应链管理中有举报行为的政企博弈,从而为我国政府主管部门在制定具体监管政策及措施时提供一个模型与定量的方法。应用博弈论方法来研究绿色供应链中的政企关系,为绿色供应链管理提供了一些有益的启发。对模型做了基本假设,考虑了消费者的举报行为,根据不同情况,分别得出纳什均衡解和混合策略最优化解。对比分析了是否存在举报行为的最优策略解,阐述了举报行为对博弈双方的策略选择的影响。总结了模型的最优策略解,并在此基础提出了政府主管部门在具体监管策略制定上如何运用该定量分析工具。     

Leadership for the next millennium: the physician executive

We continue to muddle through using tourniquets and bandaids on a health care system that is in dire straits. And the future is even less promising. There will be millions without basic health care, let alone basic health care coverage. Rural and inner-city hospitals will close, with progressive public apathy, as we focus on the marvels of expensive technologies that serve only the few. Costs will continue to rise at double digit rates, and our nation's employers will fall further behind in the global marketplace. Preventive care will be uncommonly provided and only more rarely reimbursed, while a couple more children die of measles in Mississippi. It's not a pretty picture, and it simply doesn't have to come to pass. "What we really need is leadership," the public cries. That leadership can and should come from medicine through physician executives.     

Management of Energy Technology for Sustainability: How to Fund Energy Technology Research and Development

Operations management methods have been applied profitably to a wide range of technology portfolio management problems, but have been slow to be adopted by governments and policy makers. We develop a framework that allows us to apply such techniques to a large and important public policy problem: energy technology R&D portfolio management under climate change. We apply a multi‐model approach, implementing probabilistic data derived from expert elicitations into a novel stochastic programming version of a dynamic integrated assessment model. We note that while the unifying framework we present can be applied to a range of models and data sets, the specific results depend on the data and assumptions used and therefore may not be generalizable. Nevertheless, the results are suggestive, and we find that the optimal technology portfolio for the set of projects considered is fairly robust to different specifications of climate uncertainty, to different policy environments, and to assumptions about the opportunity cost of investing. We also conclude that policy makers would do better to over‐invest in R&D rather than under‐invest. Finally, we show that R&D can play different roles in different types of policy environments, sometimes leading primarily to cost reduction, other times leading to better environmental outcomes.     

Getting the most benefit from information systems consultants

Consultants are usually well-meaning people who enjoy the variety of organizations and problems they face in their work. Most do not like to get bogged down in fruitless and wasteful consulting engagement any more than managers of health care organizations like to supervise them, but at least the consultants are paid for their time. The health care organization that defines a project poorly, does not know what it wants from consultants, or does not direct consultants will pay the price in increasingly scarce resources squandered. The tips in the following article for managing an information systems consulting engagement apply to most consulting engagements and to the use of other expensive advisers, such as attorneys and engineers. But information systems is a field particularly foreign, and often threatening, to most administrators and physician executives, so the risk of wasting money on unsuccessful consulting engagements is high.