Business Commons^™

Rethinking Research Methods In Operations And Supply Chain Management, Roberto Sarmiento, Garvan Whelan, Jan Sprenger

Practitioner Journals

A few years ago, a group of Operations Management scholars (MacCarthy et al. 2013) authored a thought-provoking paper entitled ‘The same old methodologies? Perspectives on OM research in the post-lean age’. Noting that the OM field is, by its very nature, close to practice and that the world is changing economically, technologically, politically and socially, they follow up with a pointed question (934): ‘Are our OM research methods fit for purpose for the new age?’ Amongst their many interesting views and opinions, they conclude that the OM profession must not make assertions regarding the supremacy of qualitative empirical studies over …