The Best Student Paper Award is given to the best paper presented as part of the OSCM conference program with a student as the leading author.
Papers for this award are assessed on the following criteria:
- Significance of the paper to the field of Operations and Supply Chain Management (OSCM);
- The extent to which the paper is interesting and managerially relevant;
- Theoretical contribution to OSCM;
- Use of appropriate methodological rigor;
- Clarity of writing and/or presentation.
Finalists for the award are selected by the OSCM Division Program Chair based on the ratings and comments received from AOM conference reviewers. The award winner is then chosen from these finalist papers by an independent committee following a blind review process.
2022 Best Student Paper
Winner: Developing and Implementing Business Ecosystem Strategies - A Performance Measurement Perspective
Emily C. Dickey, KLU Hamburg; Prisca Brosi, KLU Hamburg; Jan C. Fransoo, Tilburg University
Award winner picture from left to right: Jan Fransoo, Desirée von Dun (session chair), Emily Dickey, and Prisca Brosi
Finalists:
An Empirical Assessment of Firm Responses to the COVID-19 Crisis
Maximilian Klöckner, ETH Zürich; Christoph Schmidt, ETH Zürich; Stephan Wagner, ETH Zürich; Morgan Swink, Texas Christian University
Faith in Disasters: The Influence of Religion on Humanitarian Relief Operations
Llord Brooks, University of Arkansas; Iana Shaheen, University of Arkansas; David Dobrzykowski, University of Arkansas
Effective Goal Framing for Managers Using Inventory Management Systems
Dilina Kosgoda, University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka, H. Niles Perera, University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka; John Aloysius, University of Arkansas
2022 Best Student Paper Winner Feature
Congratulations on winning this award, Emily and team! What motivated you to conduct this award-winning research?
First of all, thank you! Regarding motivation, the funny thing about this paper is that it was actually born out of my Masters Thesis, not my dissertation research. I’ve always been quite passionate about supply chain transparency, especially in the global garment industry where injustices are so common due to the opaque garment supply chains. From environmental to social initiatives—if sustainability is the goal, transparency is the necessary first step. Especially with rising consumer and corporate interest in socially responsible supply chains, and in the wake of countless Covid-19 supply chain disruptions, we’re seeing supply chain issues enter the zeitgeist in an unprecedented way. Thus, researchers and companies need to have a better understanding how and why consumers respond to these supply chain phenomena, transparency being one of them.
From my Masters Thesis in 2020 to the current version of the paper today, the topic ended up being a perfect fit for our team of three. Or should I say, we soon realized the three of us were the perfect fit to tackle this topic. Much of Dr. Fransoo’s research focuses on supply chain sustainability and socially responsible supply chain management, and Dr. Brosi brought in the psychological mechanisms and methodologies to the operational context—which helped us indentify the explaining roles of trust and justice in the relationship between transparency and consumer behavior.
What is the most interesting outcome of your awarded AOM paper?
By far the most interesting outcome is the idea that even the disclosure of negative supply chain information can positively impact a company. As consumer interest in transparency rises, companies have begun to be more bold with their supply chain disclosures, without any real empirical evidence that this is a good idea. Patagonia, for example, openly discloses on their website that 39% of their suppliers pay a living wage to their workers. This transparency began a lot of online discourse; people were quite torn. If you don’t understand the realities of the global garment industry, this number seems shockingly low. However, the norm for most major apparel companies is closer to 0% of suppliers paying a living wage—it’s all relative. So companies like Patagonia are really rolling the dice on this idea of disclosing negative information, butour research findings demonstrate that this is exactly what companies should be doing!
What are your future plans? Will you continue this work?
Supply chain transparency research will only continue to become more relevant in the coming years. We definitely don’t have any plans to drop this research avenue, but my dissertation research with Dr. Brosi and Dr. Fransoo actually dips more into the behavioral operations side of sustainability research, and less consumer-facing than this current work. However, the interorganizational findings of supply chain transparency research can also be fruitful grounds for intraorganizational operations research as well. Especially using insights from signaling theory, our findings pointing to the importance of trust, justice, and transparency despite the repercussions can definitely be leveraged for operations managers on the shop floor as well as supply chain managers. If the end goal is sustainability, it all starts with transparency, no matter the context.
Emily Dickey: Emily C. Dickey began her PhD the Kuehne Logistics University (KLU) in Hamburg, Germany in September 2020 under the primary and secondary supervision of Prof. Dr. Prisca Brosi and Prof. Dr. Jan C. Fransoo, respectively. Before becoming a PhD candidate, Emily completed a double MSc degree in Global Logistics and Supply Chain Management from both the University of Tennessee and the KLU. Her current dissertation research lies at the crossroads of Operations and Supply Chain Management research and Organizational Psychology research, specifically focusing on the role of managerial emotions in operations and supply chain contexts. With a focus on behavioral experiments, she is particularly concerned with the effect managers' emotions have on social sustainability decisions, like worker safety, decent working hours in operations, and supplier selection processes in global supply chains.
Prisca Brosi: Prof. Dr. Prisca Brosi is Associate Professor of Human Resource Management at the Kuehne Logistics University in Hamburg, Germany. Dr. Brosi did her Doctorate in 2012 directly followed by her Habilitation studies at the Technical University Munich. During this time, she has been a visiting researcher at the Hong Kong Polytechnical University and the New York University. Her research focuses on the human perspective on human resource management. Her main research avenues include the study of emotions in leadership and organizational behavior and the study of the Future of Work and digitalization. Results of her research have been published in international outlets such as Journal of Applied Psychology, Human Resource Management, and Journal of Business Ethics. She also serves in the editorial board of the Journal of Organizational Behavior.
Jan Fransoo: Prof. Dr. Jan C. Fransoo is Professor of Operations and Logistics Management at Tilburg University’s School of Economics and Management in Tilburg, the Netherlands. Professor Fransoo’s research studies operations, logistics, and supply chain management decision making in the retail, chemical, food, pharmaceutical and transport industries. His current research focuses in particular on retail distribution and channel management in developing markets, on intermodal container transport, and on sustainability and social responsibility in supply chains. Fransoo has published over 130 academic journal articles and book chapters in journals such as Management Science, Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, Production and Operations Management, Operations Research, Transportation Science, and European Journal of Operational Research. He currently serves as Associate Editor of Production and Operations Management, Operations Research, and Management and Business Review and on the Editorial Board of several other academic journals.
Past Best Student Paper Awards
2021 Gurpreet Muctor: "Developing and Implementing Business Ecosystem Strategies - A Performance Measurement Perspective"
2020 Antoaneta Momcheva: "Subcontracted Labor Mix in Projects Teams: The Benefits and Costs on Financial Performance"
2019 Park Sinchaisri: "The Impact of Behavioral and Economic Drivers on Gig Economy Workers"
2018 Stefan Kurpjuweit: "Partnering with New Venture Suppliers: A Dynamic Capabilities Approach"
2017 James Knuckles, ManMohan Sodhi: “A Multiple Case Study of Development Supply Chains for Household Solar Products Sold in Haiti”
2016 Sina Golara, Kevin Dooley: “The Influence of Manufacturing Services on Innovation”
2015 Desirée van Dun, Celeste Wilderom: “Governing Highly Performing Lean Team Behaviors: A Mixed-Methods Longitudinal Study”
2014 Luv Sharma, Aravind Chandrasakeran, Ken Boyer: “The Impact of Hospital Information Technology Bundles on Performance: an Econometric Study”
2013 Marcus Bellamy, Soumen Ghosh, Manpreet Hora: “Supply network structure and firm innovation”
2012 Brett Massimino, John Gray: “The Effect of Culture and Cultural Distance on Plant-Level Process Compliance”
2011 Claire Senot, Aravind Chandrasekaran, Ken Boyer
2010 Heng Liu, Yi Liu, Yuan Li
2009 Pekka Helkio, Antti Tenhiala: “Beyond the Product-Process Matrix: Fit between Production Process Specificity and Task Environment”
2008 Bart van Hezewijk (RSM Erasmus U.)
2007 Anant Ravindra Deshpande (UT Pan American)
2006 None
2005 Andrea McGee Prud’homme (MSU), Ken Boyer (MSU), Roger Calantone (MSU)
2004 Gopesh Anand (OSU)
2003 Murat Kristal (UNC), Aleda Roth (UNC) and Jayashankar Swaminathan