Operations Strategy Research in the POMS Journal

In this paper, we examine the operations strategy literature in the POMS journal to determine what has been learned and to suggest new directions for further study in this important area of research. Our review of this literature resulted in the selection of thirty‐one relevant articles, many of which draw upon multiple theoretical perspectives. We identify eight such theoretical perspectives, and go on to classify these perspectives in terms of the scope of inquiry employed in the research (focused versus aggregated) and the researcher's assumptions about choice processes (behavioral versus rational). In doing so, we show that this body of work is dominated by papers that draw upon theoretical perspectives enabling a more holistic scope of inquiry, with a bias towards a view of strategy as a highly rational process. Building on our systematic review and integration of the literature, we suggest multiple areas for future research.     

Manufacturing Practices and Strategy Integration: Effects on Cost Efficiency,Flexibility, and Market‐Based Performance

Manufacturing plant managers have sought performance improvements through implementing best practices discussed in World Class Manufacturing literature. However, our collective understanding of linkages between practices and performance remains incomplete. This study seeks a more complete theory, advancing the idea that strategy integration and enhanced manufacturing capabilities such as cost efficiency and flexibility serve as intermediaries by which practices affect performance. Hypotheses related to this thesis are tested using data from 57 North American manufacturing plants that are past winners and finalists in Industry Week's“America's Best” competition ( Drickhamer, 2001 ). The results suggest that strategy integration plays a strong, central role in the creation of manufacturing cost efficiency and new product flexibility capabilities. Furthermore, strategy integration moderates the influences of product‐process development, supplier relationship management, workforce development, just‐in‐time flow, and process quality management practices on certain manufacturing capabilities. In turn, manufacturing cost efficiency and new product flexibility capabilities mediate the influence of strategy integration on market‐based performance. These findings have implications for practice and for future research.     

Categorizing Risks for Risk Ranking

Any practical process of risk ranking must group hazards into a manageable number of categories. Defining such categories requires value choices that can have important implications for the rankings that result. Most risk-management organizations will find it useful to begin defining categories in terms of environmental loadings or initiating events. However, the resulting categories typically need to be modified in light of other considerations. Risk-ranking projects can benefit from considering several alternative categorization strategies and drawing upon elements of each in developing their final categorization of risks. In principle, conducting multiple ranking exercises by using different categorizations could be interesting and useful. In practice, agencies are unlikely to have either the resources or patience to do this, but other groups in society might. Done well, such additional independent rankings could add valuable inputs to democratic risk-management decision making.     

Infant vocalizations elicit simplified speech in childcare

Infant babbling has an important social function in promoting early language development by attracting caregiver attention and prompting parents' contingent, simplified speech, which is more learnable for infants. Here, we demonstrate that prelinguistic infant vocalizations also create learning opportunities for infants in childcare settings by eliciting simplified and more learnable linguistic information during teacher-infant interactions. We compared the rates and complexity of contingent and non-contingent verbal interactions of 34 childcare teachers during a one-on-one free play interaction with a familiar infant under their care (M = 12.6 months old). As compared to non-contingent utterances, teachers' contingent utterances included fewer unique words, a higher proportion of single-word responses, and a shorter mean length of utterances. Teachers did not change their response length based on infants' syllable type and were equally likely to respond to vowels and consonant-vowel vocalizations. Sources of individual differences in the simplification effect related to infant behaviors and teacher characteristics are discussed. The results parallel previous findings demonstrating the simplification effect in parent-infant interactions. That teachers also show this simplification effect when responding to infant vocalizations suggests the power of infant prelinguistic vocalizations for organizing caregiver attention in various settings to elicit simplified, learnable language.     

Maternal Affective Expression and Adolescents' Subjective Experience of Positive Affect in Natural Settings

This study investigated the association between maternal affective expression during laboratory‐based interaction tasks and adolescents' experience of positive affect (PA) in natural settings. Participants were 80 healthy adolescents and their mothers. Durations of maternal positive (PA) and negative affective (NA) expressions were observed during a conflict resolution task and a positive event planning interaction task. Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) procedures were employed to assess adolescents' momentary and peak experience of PA in daily life. Results indicated that maternal NA, but not maternal PA, was related to adolescents' EMA‐reported PA. Adolescents whose mothers expressed more NA experienced less PA in daily environments. Results suggest that adolescents' exposure to maternal negative affective behavior is associated with adolescents' subjective daily well‐being.     

Alcohol,Sex, and Screens: Modeling Media Influence on Adolescent Alcohol and Sex Co-Occurrence

Alcohol use and sexual behavior are important risk behaviors in adolescent development, and combining the two is common. The reasoned action approach (RAA) is used to predict adolescents’ intention to combine alcohol use and sexual behavior based on exposure to alcohol and sex combinations in popular entertainment media. We conducted a content analysis of mainstream (n = 29) and Black-oriented movies (n = 34) from 2014 and 2013–2014, respectively, and 56 television shows (2014–2015 season). Content analysis ratings featuring character portrayals of both alcohol and sex within the same five-minute segment were used to create exposure measures that were linked to online survey data collected from 1,990 adolescents ages 14 to 17 years old (50.3% Black, 49.7% White; 48.1% female). Structural equation modeling (SEM) and group analysis by race were used to test whether attitudes, norms, and perceived behavioral control mediated the effects of media exposure on intention to combine alcohol and sex. Results suggest that for both White and Black adolescents, exposure to media portrayals of alcohol and sex combinations is positively associated with adolescents’ attitudes and norms. These relationships were stronger among White adolescents. Intention was predicted by attitude, norms, and control, but only the attitude–intention relationship was different by race group (stronger for Whites).