Handbook of Behavioral Operations
Editors: Karen Donohue (University of Minnesota), Elena Katok (University of Texas at Dallas), Stephen Leider (University of Michigan)
Publisher: Wiley
Behavioral Operations Management (BOM) incorporates insights from psychology and behavioral economics to study how individuals make decisions in an operational context. Examples of important behavioral factors include bounded rationality and decision heuristics, folk intuitions about random processes, preference regularities such as loss aversion and reference dependent preferences, and interpersonal factors such as trust and fairness. Behavioral research frequently contrasts observed behavior with the predictions of `standard' analytical models. Two major goals of BOM are to provide a better understanding of (and make better predictions about) behavioral regularities, and to provide guidance to firms on how to design mechanisms that will lead to better decisions and improved performance. Much of the existing BOM research has utilized laboratory experiments; however there are a growing number of behaviorally-influenced theoretical models, empirical research and field experiments. The field has grown tremendously in the last fifteen years - leading to several special issues in top journals (Management Science, Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, Production and Operations Management and Journal of Operations Management), an annual Behavioral Operations Research Conference, and INFORMS and POMS sections. This book aims to be a comprehensive resource on BOM research for both those active in the field and those new to it.