The Chan Hahn Best Paper Award is given to the best paper presented as part of the OSCM Division conference program.
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.
2024 Chan Hahn Best Paper Award
Winner: Diffusion of Irresponsible Workplace Practices in Supply Chains: The Chinese Industrial Sector Case
Christian Felix Durach, ESCP Business School; Di Fan, The Hong Kong Polytechnic U.; Frank Wiengarten, ESADE Business School; Veronica Haydee Villena, Arizona State U.
Unfortunately, Christian Durach, Di Fan, and Frank Wiengarten couldn't make it. Veronica Villena collected the plaques for the award.
Finalists:
Collaborative Human-Machine Learning for Demand Planning
Rebekah Inez Brau, Brigham Young U.; Finnegan McKinley, U. of Arkansas; John Aloysius, U. of Arkansas; Enno Siemsen, U. of Wisconsin, Madison.
2024 Chan Hahn Best Paper Award Winner Feature
Congratulations Christian and the team on winning this award! What motivated you to conduct this award-winning research?
The topic of social sustainability has been a central focus for our research team, and we are encouraged to see it gaining increased public and political attention. This is exemplified by initiatives such as the EU’s recent Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), which holds buying firms accountable for the sustainability of their supply chains. Despite these advances, issues such as worker safety remain critical, especially in regions with diverse industrial practices, including China. Still a major manufacturing hub for the world, there appears to be significant room for improvement in the safety standards provided for workers.
Previous research of our colleagues has highlighted internal factors within firms—such as insufficient slack and deviations from aspirational performance targets—that contribute to worker harm. However, there is still little understanding of how external factors, like the influence of downstream supply chain partners, play a role. This gap led us first to explore whether Chinese firms are penalized by shareholders for lapses in safety. Interestingly, we found no statistically significant fluctuations in stock prices following workplace accidents.
This discovery led us to a subsequent line of inquiry: If a buying firm—the downstream partner—is not penalized by the market, might suppliers also relax safety measures after buyers have had accidents? Drawing from diffusion and institutional theory, we hypothesized that such an effect could occur. Indeed, our findings support this, showing that when a buyer experiences a workplace accident, their supply base sees a higher rate of worker casualties in the same and subsequent year. We then explored several conditional factors that could influence this diffusion effect.
What is the most interesting outcome of your awarded AOM paper?
In our view, the most intriguing finding is not necessarily the diffusion effect itself—where buyers’ irresponsible workplace actions negatively affect their suppliers—but the fact that this effect is significantly stronger when the buyers are state-owned enterprises in China. This suggests that the Chinese government already holds considerable influence over reducing unsafe workplaces. Leveraging this power could be an effective strategy for mitigating the spread of unsafe practices across supply chains.
What are your future plans? How will you continue this work?
Currently, our focus is on completing all robustness tests to ensure that get as close as possible to capturing the true effects of the phenomena. Once that is finalized, our goal is to draw as much attention to this study as possible. The implications are clear: governments, particularly the Chinese government, inspection authorities, and managers have actionable insights that, if properly implemented, could significantly reduce worker harm. Our future efforts will concentrate on ensuring these findings are disseminated effectively.
Past Chan Hahn Best Paper Awards
2023 Kedong Chen, Hung-Chung Su, Kevin Linderman, William Li, Shanghai Jiao: "Last-Minute Coordination Between Warehouses: An Empirical Analysis in E-Commerce"
2022 Kevin Lau and David Bendig: "Go Bold or Go Home: Measuring the Effect of Industry 4.0 Implementation on Firm Performance"
2021 Yingchao Lan, Deepa Wani, Aravind Chandrasekaran: "Ancillary Cost Implications of Multisiting and Organizational Boundary Spanning During Healthcare"
2020 Veronica Haydee Villena, Miriam Michiko Wilhelm, Chengyong Xiao: "Untangling Drivers for Supplier Environmental and Social Responsibility"
2019 Arunachalam Narayanan, Alan Mackelprang, Manoj Malhotra: "Effect of Capacity and Flexibility Constraints on Bullwhip Effect in Supply Chains"
2018 Siqi Ma, John Aloysius, Li Hao: "Gender Pairing and Cooperative Behavior: An Experimental Study"
2017 Christoph Bode, Maximilian Merath: “Supply Disruption Management: The Early Bird Catches the Worm, but the Second Mouse Gets the Cheese?”
2016 Veronica H. Villena, Li Cheng “The Benefits and Downsides of Common Supply Chain Partners”
2015 Stephanie Eckerd, Sean Handley: “To Err is Human: A Model of Interorganizational Violations and Repair”
2014 John Gray, Sean Handley: “Managing Contract Manufacturer Quality when Product Testability is Low”
2013 Jeremy Kovach, Manpreet Hora: “Firm Performance in Dynamic Environments: The Role of Operational Slack and Operational Flexibility”
2012 John Gray, Gopesh Anand, Aleda Roth: “ISO 9000 as a Best Practice Intervention: An Empirical Examination”
2011 Anand Gopal, Manu Goyal, Serguei Netessine, Matthew Reindorp: “Impact of New Product Introduction on Plant Productivity”
2010 Dayna Simpson: “Organizational Information Gathering and Recycling Performance Outcomes”
2009 Rob Klassen, Markus Biehl: “Toward Assessing Financial Returns from Green Structural and Infrastructural Expenditures”
2008 Mile Terziovski and Shyong Wai Foon (U. of Melbourne)
2007 Xiande Zhao, Baofeng Huo, Jeff Hoi Yan Yeung (Chinese U. Hong Kong), and Barbara B. Flynn (Indiana)
2006 Xingxing Zu, Lawrence Fredendall, Tina Robbins (Clemson U.)
2007 None
2005 Ravi Kathuria (Chapman University)
2004 Adrian Choo (RPI), Kevin Lindermand (Minnesota) and Roger Schroeder (Minnesota)
2003 Mark Pagell (Oregon State) and Daniel Krause (Arizona State)
2002 None
2001 Mark Pagell and Chwen Sheu (Kansas State University)
2000 Morgan Swink and Dongsong Zeng (Michigan State University)
1999 Mohan Tatikonda (UNC) and Stephen Rosenthal (Boston U)
1998 Shaker Zahra (Georgia State University), Anders Nielsen (Aalborg University)
1997 1. Ken Boyer (DePaul University) / 2. Robert D. Klassen (University of Western Ontario) (two awards)
1996 Larry Menor, Aleda Roth and Charlotte Manson (UNC)
1995 Kim Bates (New York University) and Jim Flynn (Iowa State University)