Abstract :
Behavioral operations management (BOM) is one of the new areas in operations
management. In the past 12 years, the field has made huge progress
and researchers have become interested in this new perspective to solving
operational problems. BOM is now one of the major subfields of operations
management. In this paper, we examine and categorize areas of BOM
based on the mainstream literature. Key areas include behavioral issues in
new product development and project management, quality management,
production management, inventory management, service operations, and
forecasting. Studies in each area are divided into three subcategories,
including OM context, individual attributes, heuristics, and biases, and
individual differences. In OM context category, feedback and reward, training,
work monitoring, teamwork and group decision making, goal setting,
task assignment, and flexibility are among the main topics. In individual
attributes, heuristics, and biases category, sunk cost effect and escalation of
commitment, endowment effect, overprecision bias, planning fallacy, pullto-
center effect, anchoring and insufficient adjustment, and misperceptions
of feedback are mainly discussed. In individual differences, analytic thinking
and system thinking are mainly studied. New areas for research are
suggested in each related section and are summarized in future directions
and conclusion sections. In contexts such as new product development,
project management, and inventory management, a shift to finding solution
to performance improvement is beneficial instead of focusing on heuristics
and biases and considering them as a deficiency in human decision making.
Regarding individual differences category, a shift toward attributes other
than cognitive abilities, such as global processing, creative thinking, and
design thinking are recommended.
Keywords :
Heuristics , Biases , Bounded rationality , Pure rationality , Behavioral operations management
