Operations and Supply Chain Management Commons^™

From Suppliers’ Esg Performance To Corporate Bargaining Power With Customers: A Supply Chain Advantage Transmission Perspective, Minghao Du

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

With the growing awareness of sustainable development, Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) practices has increasingly become a critical source for firms to meet stakeholder demands and gain new competitive advantages. In particular, under the backdrop of rising supply chain risks, stakeholder concerns are no longer confined to the ESG performance of individual firms; rather, they have expanded to encompass the entire supply chain, attaching equal importance to the ESG performance of both focal firms and their supply chain partners. With the continuous tightening of ESG regulatory requirements, customers may move beyond managing the ESG practices of first-tier suppliers to paying …

Compliance Supervision And Firm Performance: An Empirical Study On Digital Transformation Of The Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Industry, Jun Ma

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

The biopharmaceutical industry, characterized by stringent global regulatory oversight, faces a pivotal theoretical tension regarding the nexus between regulatory compliance and corporate performance. The traditional perspectives often frame compliance as an “operational burden”, while the emerging viewpoints posit it as a “strategic asset”. Grounded in an integrated framework of the Resource-Based View (RBV) and Dynamic Capability (DC), this study investigates the moderating role of digital transformation in the relationship between Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) compliance and corporate performance.

Employing a mixed-method design, this paper conducted two complementary studies. Study 1 adopted a grounded theory based on interviews with nine industry …

How Do Monetary Incentives Affect Prosocial Behavior Among Gig Workers?—Behavioral Experiments Based On Flashex, Peng Xue

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

The gig economy has reshaped labor markets. Motivating mobile, loosely contracted gig workers to engage in prosocial behavior is critical for platform governance. This paper uses a randomized field experiment on FlashEx in comparable Chinese cities to examine how monetary incentives affect delivery workers’ prosocial behavior and related economic outcomes.

The main findings of this study are as follows. First, monetary incentives significantly promote gig workers’ prosocial behavior, effectively increasing both the likelihood and frequency of their participation in altruistic acts. This effect is primarily driven by the “instrumental value” mechanism in the gig economy: the platform’s gold coin rewards, …

Research On The Impact Of Supply Chain Digitization On Innovation Performance: Based On Quasi-Natural Experiments And Longitudinal Case Study, Binbin Chen

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

The Chinese government prioritizes supply chain digital transformation. Pilot policies for supply chain digitalization will accelerate digital development across industrial and supply chains. While existing research offers substantial empirical evidence on supply chain digitalization, its impact on corporate innovation performance requires further investigation. Based on this, the study constructs a quasi-natural experiment using data from A-share listed companies and appropriate econometric models, demonstrating that supply chain digitalization significantly enhances corporate innovation performance. This effect is statistically and economically significant, providing a foundation for future research. The study also identifies the mechanisms through which supply chain digitalization improves corporate innovation performance, …

The Moderating Role Of Digital Multi-Sided Platform On The Firm Value Of Traditional Value-Chain Firms, Chee Pheng Lim

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

This dissertation examines the strategic value and performance implications for traditional value-chain firms (TVCFs) that adopt digital multi-sided platforms (DMSPs) to augment their existing businesses. DMSPs facilitate interactions among multiple user groups through digital intermediaries, generating self-reinforcing network effects that enhance value creation, reduce operational and transaction costs, and enable collective innovation. Despite the prevalence of platform-based firms, 60% of global unicorns and 7 of the world’s 10 most valuable companies operate digital platforms, empirical research on the value-creation mechanisms of DMSPs remains limited. Anchored in the resource-based view and platform theory, this study investigates how DMSP moderates the relationship …

Empirical Program Evaluation In Operations Management, Kai Tian

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

This dissertation focuses on advancing and applying empirical program evaluation methodologies in Operations Management (OM), defining it not as mere prediction but as rigorously establishing causal effects of interventions. Chapter 2 lays the theoretical groundwork, defining empirical program evaluation within OM, detailing its alignment with causal inference, and outlining both classical econometric techniques and emerging Causal Machine Learning (CML) approaches for mitigating endogeneity. Building on this foundation, Chapter 3 presents an empirical application, evaluating the causal impact of a customer targeting strategy using live-streaming advertisements, employing Propensity Score Matching (PSM) in conjunction with linear regression models to derive actionable insights …

Risk Management For Semiconductor Manufacturing Equipment Suppliers Within Rapid Changing International Environment: An Empirical Study, Youbing Cao

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Semiconductors, as a key upstream component in the electronics and information industries, have attracted global attention from nations and corporations due to their vast market values. The emergence of global semiconductor supply chains has fostered specialized industrial divisions, such as semiconductor materials, semiconductor manufacturing equipment, and semiconductor fabrication. While China’s semiconductor industry holds certain global market shares across various sectors, it still lags in advanced technologies and high-end markets. Since 2018, the United States has imposed increasing tariffs and export restrictions on many Chinese firms (known as the US-China trade war) to prevent technology outflows, leading to substantial uncertainties that …

Designing Pull-Based Energy System Rules For Public Buildings: An Application Of Modularity, Lei Wang

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Building energy systems, particularly Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) systems, play a pivotal role in global sustainability efforts. Yet, traditional centralized HVAC systems continue to face major challenges: high energy consumption, significant operational costs, and limited adaptability to dynamic energy demands. These inefficiencies are compounded by the difficulty of integrating renewable energy sources into outdated system designs. As a result, substantial energy waste persists, posing obstacles to cost-effective, environmentally sustainable building operations.

This dissertation proposes a modular, pull-based energy framework to address these critical challenges. By combining the principles of modularity theory with demand-driven energy distribution, the framework enables …

Competitive Advantage Of Short Food Supply Chains For Organic Vegetables In India: A Multi-Stakeholder, Mixed Method Study Of Farmers, Consumers And Intermediaries, Bhoovarahan Thirumalai Nambakkam

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Competitive advantage of Short Food Supply Chains for organic vegetables in India – a multi-stakeholder, mixed method study of farmers, consumers and intermediaries.

Short food supply chains (SFSC) are characterized by one (or zero) intermediaries (structural proximity), short distance (geographic proximity), trusted relationships (relationship proximity) and alignment of values (values proximity) between consumers and farmers.

This multi-method case study investigates proximity of SFSCs as a driver for increased willingness to pay (WTP) by consumers for organic vegetables in a global south developing country - India. The study analyzed revealed preference (published prices of a conventional chain and SFSCs), stated preference …

Trade War And The Reshaping Of Global Supply Chain In The Automotive Industry, Feng Wang

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

The China-US trade war disrupted nearly half a century of trade liberalization, impacting the global distribution of production and the configuration of supply chains. This paper focuses on automobile production and tire supply to analyze the impact of industrial layout changes during the China-US trade war on the global supply chain structure. The study finds that for US automobile production, the trade war presents both positive and negative effects. While tariffs on automobiles protect the local automotive market, the increased production costs due to tariffs on components place US-made cars at a competitive disadvantage in the global market, negatively affecting …

Research On The Implementation Path Of Digital Transformation In Manufacturing Enterprises: A Case Study Of An Aluminum Deep Processing Company, Yanhong Zhang

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Currently, the internal conditions and external environment for the development of China’s manufacturing industry are undergoing profound and complex changes, and face new opportunities and challenges. In this context, why do manufacturing enterprises need to urgently carry out digital transformation, and the motivations, paths, values and criteria for the success for digital transformation all need to be systematically analyzed and studied?

This paper takes a certain aluminum deep-processing company as an example, focusing on the development strategies of digital transformation in the manufacturing industry. A maturity model of digital transformation for aluminum deep-processing company is constructed through literature research, qualitative …

The Impact Of Organizational Dynamic Capability On Collaborative Innovation: A Supply Chain Perspective, Xiangdong Wang

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Innovation capability is one of the most important competitive advantages of the firms, and fully collaborating with partners in the supply chain to form an innovation alliance has been proven can effectively promote the firm’s innovation performance. This research apply case study on China sportswear supply chain with a mixed method, aims to disclose the innovation Black-box and reveal the influencing factors and its mechanism. The study consists of two parts, Study 1 is semi-structured interviews with 32 industry experts, through the analysis of the interview records, we figured out what factors the industry experts believe it can improve the …

Maintaining Consistent Sustainability Performance Through Peaks In Last Mile Logistics: What Factors Most Influence The Maintenance Of Consistent Social And Environmental Sustainability Performance In Last Mile Logistics During Peak Periods? How Do These Factors Exercise This Influence?, Prashant Saran

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Last Mile Logistics (LML) is the final leg of the supply chain that gets the product to the chosen destination point of the end consumer. LML has been witnessing unprecedented growth driven by increasing urbanization and growth in e-commerce retail sales. The impact of the rapid growth of LML is being witnessed both in the social and environmental dimensions, making social and environmental sustainability (S&ES) of LML an impactful area of research. LML deliveries driven by e-commerce also experience multiple demand peaks where the number of packages to be delivered spikes significantly over a short period of a few days …

Essays On Operations Management Problems In Service And Retail Systems, Ruijie Zhang

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Customers' waiting experiences are crucial in service and retail systems, and this thesis investigates their impact in various contexts. In the service system, long waiting time causes customers' no-show behavior, and negative feedback from existing customers, which in turn results in low conversion and loss of revenue for service providers. However, waiting is not always a negative presence. In the online retail system, with the innovation of the sales model, long waiting can earn more time for online retailers to ease the logistics pressure although it may reduce customers' willingness to pay at the same time. Against this backdrop, in …

Essays On New Business Models In Operations, Liling Lu

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

This dissertation consists of three essays about problems of managing operations with emerging new business models that are broadly related to anti-counterfeiting, car subscription programs, and on-demand ride-hailing services. In the following three chapters, each studies one type of new business model with opportunities and challenges, and builds analytical models to explore the implications on firms' operational decisions.

Chapter 2 studies the emergence of “super fakes,” and investigates the effectiveness of the new anti-counterfeiting measure — converting counterfeiters to authorized suppliers. We employ a game-theoretic model to examine interactions between a brand-name firm with its home supplier, and a counterfeiter …

Customer Value, Product Repositioning And Supply Chain Strategy: A Case Of Supply Chain Design For Lansea Corporation, Lei Zhang

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

With continuous development of Chinese economy, the incomes of Chinese citizens are constantly increasing, leading to dramatical changes of consumer demand patterns, especially in household electric appliances. The analysis of income and household wealth shows that the proportion of the middle-class population is about 20%-30% of the total population, and this proportion is still increasing. Consequently, it seems that consumption is constantly upgrading. This means, on one hand, part of the consumers still focuses on quality and cost, while on the other hand, part of consumers pays more attention on performance and styles. Therefore, it is critical for the manufacturers …

Research On A Suitable Upstream Traceability Model For The Natural Rubber Supply Chain In Thailand, Specifically For Rib-Smoke-Sheet (Rss), Beh Kok Fong

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Traceability is the first step to gain visibility in the supply chain and can be used to meet different purposes. Similar to other agriculture crops, the natural rubber industry faces reputational damage due to deforestation, land grab, loss of biodiversity and non-compliance with environmental standards occurring in the upstream. The introduction of new social and environmental regulations accelerates the need for traceability. Reflecting on the importance of environmental and social considerations, this industry is looking at traceability to identify the historical trends leading to the present sustainability state and any ongoing sustainability risks in the upstream to enable downstream users …

The Impact Of Innovation On The Performance Of Chinese Listed Companies, Shaoying Luo

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Company innovation has significant consequences for the macroeconomic development of the nation as well as serving as a guide for the creation of innovation strategies at the micro level of enterprises. But because the mechanism linking R&D inputs to firm success has not been completely explored, findings for various samples and sample intervals have varied greatly. Therefore, using the data of listed companies in China from 2009 to 2017 as the research sample, this paper introduces mediating and moderating variables to empirically analyze the mediating effect of innovation output in the correlation between R&D input and firm performance and the …

Building A Supply Chain For Emergency: A Case Study Of Kingfa's Mask Supply Chain, Nanjing Li

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

In case of emergency such as pandemic or earthquake, there are usually surge demands for some necessary products, which are usually far more than available production capacities thus it is necessary to quickly build more production capacities. However, building production capacities is not just building production lines but to constructing whole supply chains, from raw materials and equipment sourcing, manufacturing flow lines to demand management.

To quickly construct a supply chain for fulfilling such emergency demands is very challenging both theoretically and practically. This thesis aims to develop a model of supply chain construction for emergency demand and identify the …

Predicting Success And Failure Factors Of Thai Start-Ups: An Empirical Study Of Start-Up Success And Its Determinants In Thailand, Ajjaree Limpamont

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Innovation is crucial to economic growth in both developed and emerging countries across the world. Its benefits creates impact on individuals, corporate and government stakeholders in improving quality of lives, increasing income levels and boost up economics. While innovations are important, where, and how they are best conceived of, managed, executed, and brought to the society has been of great debate and has attracted a great deal of scholarly inquiry. There have been numerous research findings discussing the wisdom and impact of each of these pathways. While the business start-up is an effective organizational form for harnessing resources and creating …

Social New Retailing Business Model And Its Applicable Regulatory Pattern, Rui Wang

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

With the booming development of mobile Internet in China, social platforms have unlocked new channels for commodity supply chain and retailing and promoted business model innovation. Online social networking has fundamentally changed the way the entire society communicates. Social networking is no longer constrained by space, social platforms have become a stage for many ordinary people to showcase themselves, and the popularity of mobile payment has made mobile phones the wallets of Chinese residents as well. The innovative contents and interaction styles delivered by social software have triggered a qualitative change in the efficiency of everyone's communication and interaction, making …

Optimising Cold Chain Asset Locations With Real-Estate Considerations: A China Perspective, Chaik Ming Koh

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

This thesis explores the logistics costs optimization of a cold chain logistics network with a real estate perspective. This study draws on data and experience of a cold chain player in China. This study seeks to help users who are currently renting large amounts of warehouse space to quantitatively and systematically evaluate if they should construct their own warehouses and then do a sale-and-leaseback to achieve economic benefits. Using a computing optimization model, the study was able to find the optimized parameters of warehouse capacity, warehouse quality to build as well as the recommended existing network warehouses to use, to …

Path To Global Inflence:Conditions For Chinese Film Industry To Succeed, Dong Yu

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

The world has undergone tectonic transformations since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. Inevitably, the pandemic created the perfect conditions for the acceleration of digitization and new infrastructural technologies aimed to increase the speed and availability of content. In China, the pandemic forced
major releases to be streamed via online platforms and drastically altered consumer’s perception of the quality of digital content. Most importantly, digital streaming has shown huge capitalization potential, aided by the spread of 5G technologies, as those who embraced online platforms thrived in the midst
of the global pandemic. During the course of this dissertation, the Chinese …

Essays On Predictive And Prescriptive Analytics For Risk Monitoring And Population Screening In Healthcare Management, Yan He

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Due to increased aging populations and changes in lifestyles, we have witnessed an increased prevalence of various chronic and acute diseases and a drastic rise in healthcare expenditures in recent years. It is of paramount importance for public health to promote regular screening and close monitoring to detect the early onset of diseases. On the other hand, the increasing availability of healthcare data and advancement in data analytics offer a huge potential to facilitate this goal. We can analyze the vast amount of data and recommend more personalized diagnostic tests after receiving results and signals from screening tests and monitoring …

Debiasing A Decision Maker Facing Supply Uncertainties In A Newsvendor Setting, Alan William Zeller

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Companies must be prepared to manage uncontrollable events that will disrupt their supply chain and add uncertainty to their inventory models.

This thesis first studies the effect of different types of supply disruption risks on the ordering performance of profit-maximizing decision makers in a newsvendor setting.

Then, this thesis aims at extending the literature on the newsvendor model in studying the effect of a Decision Support System and the effect of a Secondary Task on the ordering performance of profit-maximizing decision makers who face supply uncertainties in a newsvendor setting.

Finally, implications for scholars and practitioners are discussed.

Flexible Resource Allocation For Service And Production Systems, Peng Wang

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Resource flexibility hedges against uncertainty in service and production systems. However, flexibility also brings complexity and difficulty in allocating resources. The thesis mainly studies managing flexible resources in two scenarios. The first scenario is a type of coordination of workers in a production or assembly line – bucket brigade. Specifically, the study shows how to manage a stochastic bucket brigade with discrete work stations. The second scenario is a service system with flexible service resources. The study proposes a distributive decision rule for the allocation of resources under both supply and demand uncertainty.

Chapter 2 studies a J-station, I-worker bucket …

Essays On Management Of Scarce Resources, Qian Luo

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Efficient management of scarce resources is critical to the improvement of economic, social and/or environmental performances. In this dissertation, I focus on the management of two scarce resources: i) healthcare resources and ii) water, and investigate two important problems: i) the estimation of patients’ health transition to support healthcare resources control under the context of sequential medical treatments, and ii) the urban water system control with a specific focus on the wastewater recycling capacity investment in the presence of climate change and urban water scarcity. The first chapter studies how to estimate patients’ health transition considering the effects of treatment-effect-based …

Resilience As An Organisational Capability: A Study Of How Firms Survive And Outperform In Disruptive Times, Dietmar Kappel

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

An environment, in which volatility and deep uncertainty represent the leading paradigm, pressures firms to focus their attention on adapting to disruptive environmental conditions. Although scholarly attention in the firm-level resilience construct has increased over the years, a number of important issues remain underexplored. To advance progress in the field, research is needed on the dimensions of resilient response formulation and enactment, the dimensions of the disruptive environment and situational factors as well as resilience as a latent outcome variable. Based on an in-depth, systematic review of the received literature, this thesis aims to extend the firm-level resilience literature by …

Behavioural Incentivization In Healthcare Operations, Nicholas Teck Boon Yeo

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Common across current research in healthcare operations is the conclusion that there exist many inefficiencies in today’s healthcare systems. Governments and healthcare organisations have sought to address these inefficiencies through the introduction of new policies and operational procedures or by relying on incentives to encourage specific behaviour. However, despite these attempts to reduce inefficiencies in the healthcare systems, the problem persists and is further exacerbated by growing medical complexities coupled with a rapidly ageing population. Against this backdrop, this dissertation investigates two issues within healthcare operations: (i) colorectal cancer (CRC) screening adherence, and (ii) blood donor management. A distinguishing feature …

Examining The Real Costs Of Us Manufacturing Decoupling Strategies, Sze Chiang Jonathan Chee

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Decoupling strategies have been the main focus of supply chain and resource management studies. Increasingly, due to the shift in geopolitical dynamics, the term ‘decoupling’ is now used in finance, accounting, political, and strategic management fields to describe the effect from the fallout of tense international relations. Existing research on this topic includes modeling strategic retaliation theories and evaluating firm effects from an accounting and finance perspective. Yet, there still is little research published on meso-level analysis of the relationship between macro and micro factors that affect organizational decoupling strategies. This study hopes to add to this new body of …