The Roadmap

An article in the Journal of Operations Management, "Behavior in Operations Management: Assessing Recent Findings and Revisiting Old Assumptions", provides a framework for considering the application of behavioral theory towards behavioral-assumption clarifications across a variety of traditional operations management contexts from project management to procurement. It also emphasizes the severe gaps that still remain in the literature at this interface. The inadequacy of support for existing assumptions, and the attempts of models to nevertheless make claims based on such limitations remains problematic in terms of the practicality of such models. This weakness is echoed in Sterman's prize winning lecture titled poignantly "All Models are Wrong".

Behavioral research in OM is certainly not new (as exemplified by Hill's 1982 work on scheduling heuristics), yet it remains under-examined and underutilized to the detriment of the entire OM community. To help further facilitate research interest at the Human Behavior and Operations interface, and in an attempt to appeal to both OR modelers and OM empiricists, the following integrated roadmap for exploration is posited.

Behavioral Explication / Refinement

Theorize and empirically test for the codifiable nature of specific aspects of human behavior (which are otherwise simply assumed by OR models) in operational work settings. Such explication will by necessity involve some level of empirical work, with the knowledge of existing math-theoretic assumptions in OR models. Ideally such work would involve the joint efforts of OM empiricists guided by OR modelers. For more on the usefulness of models with regards to these efforts see Loch and Wu's brief (usefulness of models). For more on the criticality of empirical views in this effort, and in the field of OM in general see Voss' brief (risk of missing empirical insights).

Robustness Confirmation / Validation

Confirm both existing and recent explications / codifications of human behavior (as applied in OR models) through retesting. Such work will not only ensure that the behavior can in fact be better modeled by specific codified forms than by alternate assumptions (which may have neglected its consideration entirely), but it will also allow for testing of the robustness of such explications across various OM settings and work scenarios. Mainly empirically focused work, and likely aided by human laboratory work in particular. A primer for OM researchers interested in laboratory work is provided in the attached brief (experimental validity) provided by Bachrach and Bendoly. Alse see a note on the use of student subject by Croson (students subjects).

Explicit Integration of Behavior

Integrate empirically confirmed codified models into OR models to test for major deviations from past math-modelling findings.Identify new nuances or other areas for neeeded empirical clarification. Such an effort will likely be best promoted by OR modelers guided by the sincere interest of applying realistic codifications of behavior to better inform the operations community. It's findings will likely lead to further work in Behavioral Explication.

Mechanistic Enrichment

Integrate math-theoretic dynamics in a predictive sense with OB models of performance and subsequent empirical work (almost entirely based on assumed linear relationships of causality and association at this point). As with Behavior Explication this will necessarily require joint efforts by both OR modelers familiar with mechanistic phenomena and empirical researchers familiar with both empirical methods and micro-behavioral theory. Such work would actually help clarify observed dynamics and filter out extraneous non-behavioral issues. It would ultimately lend to the sharpening of codifications of behavior.The structure of this roadmap is not unlike that recently proposed by Marshall Fisher in his plenary talk at POMS 2005 {empiricism and validation followed by model application}. It is also indicative of the criticality of viewing human behavior as an element of economic and management models (c.f. Alvin Roth's article on "Experimental Economics"). Having presented this roadmap, it is the current interest not only to help guide interests but also provide interested individuals with links to related work that appears to fall along these lines,