Strengthening the Empirical Base of Operations Management

Fisher: Strengthening the Empirical Base of Operations Management
370 Manufacturing & Service Operations Management 9(4), pp. 368–382, © 2007 INFORMS
Figure 1 A Taxonomy of Empirical Research
Interaction with the world
Highly
structured:
Data and
algorithms
Less structured:
Interviews and
observations
Prescriptive
Goal of the research
Descriptive
than a clinical trial and there is no immediate action
prescribed by the observations of a single patient.
Lab research on mice and epidemiological studies
seem more structured to me, but aimed at a general
understanding of a disease. It is hoped that this
general understanding might eventually lead to a recommended
treatment, but that is not the immediate
goal. I had to think hard to come up with an entrant
for the lower-left box but concluded that critical care
paths qualify. These are detailed descriptions of the
exact procedure to be followed in a surgical procedure,
including pre- and post-surgical steps. (See
Wheelright and Weber1995 fora more extensive discussion
of critical care paths.) As such, critical care
paths are clearly prescriptive, but in the examples
I have seen, the care path is determined largely by
interviewing doctors and other health care practitioners
regarding their opinion of best practice. Health
outcomes research attempts to discover best treatment
options by looking at a large sample of patients who
Figure 2 Empirical Research in Medicine
Interaction with the world
Highly
structured:
Data and
algorithms
Less structured:
Interviews and
observations
Goal of the research
Prescriptive Descriptive
Clinical trial for a
new drug
Critical care path
Laboratory research
on mice
Epidemiological studies
that mine population
data for disease
correlates
Observation of
interesting cases
Figure 3 Empirical Research in Operations Management
Interaction with the world
Highly
structured:
Data and
algorithms
Goal of the research
Prescriptive Descriptive
Engineering
Software implementation
of algorithm deployed in
a company and run daily
Principles
Less structured:
Ohno invents Toyota
Interviews and Production System,
observations inspired by the principles
of U.S. supermarkets
Operations management
econometrics
Statistical analysis of
large data sets to
discover drivers of
success in operations
Case studies
Interview and observe
managers
Research cases
received different treatments for the same disease and
identifying the treatment variant that correlates with
the best results. To the extent that critical care paths in
the future will be guided by outcomes research, they
would move toward the upper left box.
Now we can think about how prior empirical
research in operations management fits into this
matrix. Figure 3 shows the matrix labeled with types
of empirical research in operations management and
with one ormore examples of each type. As one
can infer from the array of activities depicted in this
matrix, my own definition of empirical research is
broad and includes any effort to gather and report
information about real operations that is accurate, is
intellectually deep, raises interesting research questions,
and contains enough correct analysis to at least
partially answer those questions. If you object that
this definition of empirical research is overly broad
and that only what I have called operations management
econometrics deserves to be called research, feel
free to think of this matrix of activities as field work. I
would certainly acknowledge that some entries in the
matrix, such as interviews with managers, may not
be a stand-alone publishable product. However, as
described in §8, such activities can be extremely valuable
as part of a broader program of activity involving
othercells of the matrix.
Including case studies and the implementation of
an algorithm in a single company in the matrix raises
the question of whether research based on a single
observation is valid. Certainly research based on a
large number of observations is to be encouraged, but
there is also much to be learned from deep and exten-