Behavioral Operations Management

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in behavioral theory of operational dynamics and performance. This interest has revealed behavioral operations management. Behavioral production management can be defined as the cross point of manufacturing activities with the methods of different disciplines such as psychology, sociology, experimental and behavioral economics, organizational behavior and management. Behavioral operations contain both elements of operations and behaviors . The focus of the behavioral operations management research is operational viewpoint. In this context, it differs from organizational behavior field. The aim of behavioral operations management research is not to understand deeply leadership, justice, emotions and motivations. On the contrary, the aim of behavioral operations management research is to understand the production process deeply. Despite the role of behavioral factors have been accepted in production area, in order to systematically frame the production phenomenon as branch of science, measurable and objective factors have been at the focus of the researchers. Behavioral factors have been left to other disciplines. Perhaps behavioral operations management is the end of this postponement. Behavioral approach to operations management bridges the gap between the traditional model and the new empirical findings, in other words it provides the connective function. Traditional production management has established its scientific structure more on mathematical modeling. In general, the paradigms of behavioral experimentation and mathematical modeling require different tradeoffs. Each creates its own set of assumptions. But at the same time each methodology makes significant contributions in their own area. More importantly, these two methodologies operate as complementing to one another.. This study, extends the knowledge on behavioral operations management incorporating behavioral issues with operations activities. At first, the necessity of incorporating behavioral approaches with the production management will be discussed. Furthermore, the fundamental assumptions of behavioral operations will be explained through the assumptions of traditional operations and behavioral operations will be exemplified. Especially, describing the working field has been one of the most fundamental and difficult problem for researchers in behavioral operations. Finally, behavioral operations management research subjects and methods will be handled. Behavioral operations is relatively very new field and especially should develop its scientific literature sources. This study, will try to contribute to this field that hardly finds place in Turkish literature.