Call for Papers
Special Issue of the Journal of Operations Management
Mobility, Climate Change, and Economic Inequality
Scope
Operations management (OM) is at the heart of two critical sustainability challenges in the 21stcentury: the need to urgently reduce greenhouse gas emissions to avoid catastrophic disruption to the climate, and the need to improve access to ‘good’ jobs to address growing income inequality globally.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the transportation industry. Transportation is a key contributor to climate change, accounting for 21% of carbon emissions globally (United States Environmental Protection Agency). Transportation and vehicle production systems are woven into the fabric of global and local economies, and in many places have been a significant source of middle-class jobs such as trucking, auto assembly, and bus driving. Moreover, the mobility provided by our transportation systems has an important effect on patterns of land use, resource consumption, and access to jobs.
Substantial changes in transportation—brought about by technological innovations, changing consumer preferences, public policies, and OM—have the potential to disrupt traditional patterns of work and life, redistribute income, and help or hinder progress towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions. We focus on how operational decision making can improve the environmental and socioeconomic impact of transportation systems, and what role policy can play in realizing these improvements.
How the topic will benefit from empirical research
While the urgency of climate change and employment inequality is widely recognized, and despite transportation and vehicle production systems being a core empirical setting of OM research, the OM field has not yet fully realized its potential in addressing these concerns. The key outcomes of transportation systems emerge from the interactions of multiple entities, with uncoordinated management, suboptimal bottlenecks, and information deficits and asymmetries all being hallmarks of global transport systems. Since these phenomena are key concerns of OM, the OM field is well equipped to address them.
Our aim is to bring together empirical papers that link operational decision making to policy in order to improve transportation systems, from both environmental and socioeconomic perspectives. Studies addressing the interrelation between existing policies and specific operational systems are welcomed, as are in-depth studies of existing operational systems that provide initial policy improvement suggestions.
For example, authors could study the impact of emission trading and/or taxation policies on operational decisions as wide-ranging as process improvement, material usage, or production localization. Alternatively, taking a desired outcome as a starting point (e.g., good jobs), authors could study current operational decision making in order to suggest improvements. An example is decisions regarding outsourcing, which may improve an organization’s ability to focus on its core competencies but on the flip side may negatively impact the bargaining power, wages, career path, and safety of workers (“fissuring”).
By gathering examples and analysis of both best practice cases as well as failed efforts, we aim to help provide a research agenda for the OM field to tackle these critical societal problems. We are open to a variety of empirical methodologies, including empirically grounded models, econometric analysis, and qualitative studies.
The topic’s relevance to OM researchers and practitioners
Our goal is to explicate the link between operational decision making and environmental and socioeconomic outcomes. By doing so we hope to encourage OM scholars and practitioners to consider these outcomes for all stakeholders when they study and manage operational systems. By subsequently making their work accessible to policymakers, OM scholars can support the formulation of actionable improvements and hereby make their work even more relevant.
List of example sub-topics within our scope
Our key question is: How can vehicle production, mobility, and transportation systems become more sustainable and support income equality?We are particularly interested in contributions that explore the linkage between private action and public policy. For example, when is a reframing of private costs and benefits (as in exploration of the hidden costs to companies of high worker turnover) sufficient to align public and private incentives, and when are new public policies needed? What types of public policies are most effective?
▪ What are the implications for climate and job quality of the existing vehicle supply chain being under threat from innovations both upstream (e.g., automation, artificial intelligence, 3D printing) and downstream (e.g., mobility-as-a-service, electrification, autonomy)?
▪ How do the policies used to generate and diffuse (operational) innovation affect the distribution of opportunities and outcomes in society?
▪ How might efficiency improvement benefit the workforce? For example, would profit/gain-sharing help with income equality?
▪ What is the likely impact—on the number, quality, and location of jobs—of a move toward different propulsion technologies (e.g., electricity, hydrogen) and the introduction of selfdriving cars and trucks?
▪ What are the climate impacts of the existing vehicle supply chain, and how might they be reduced? What are the operational implications of different policies to reduce carbon emissions, such as carbon taxes, cap and trade, fuel economy standards?
▪ Can efficiency be incentivized as a sustainability goal rather than merely as a profit-enhancing one?
▪ How can policymakers promote sustainable vehicle production industries? For example, how can industries be encouraged to recycle and reduce waste?
▪ What has been the impact of “technology-forcing” legislation on the direction, process, and/or performance of innovation in the vehicle sector?
▪ What has been in the past (or may be in the future) the impact of changes in transportation on congestion and access to good jobs? How can policy contribute to this? How do consumers’ changing mobility requirements impact jobs?
▪ What will be the effect of new digital innovations on the management of operations such as ride hailing?
▪ Who should have access to the large amounts of data generated by vehicles in the digital era (such as information on accidents, starting and ending points of trips)? What impact might such access have on who creates and captures value?
Guest Editors
Susan Helperis Department Editor in JOM’s Public Policy department and the Frank Tracy Carlton Professor of Economics at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University. She was formerly Chief Economist at the U.S. Department of Commerce and a member of the White House Staff. She has served as chair of the Economics Department, and she has been a visiting scholar at University of Oxford, the University of California (Berkeley), Harvard University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Her research focuses on the globalization of supply chains and on how U.S. manufacturing might be revitalized. Dr. Helper received her Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard and her B.A. from Oberlin College in Economics, Government and Spanish.
David R. Keith is the Mitsui Career Development Professor and Assistant Professor of System Dynamics at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Drawing on his experience working in the automotive industry, he studies consumer behavior, firm strategy, and the formation of markets for emerging automotive technologies. His research examines issues including spatial patterns of technology adoption, supply constraints in production, platform competition, and the impact of new technologies on energy consumption and the environment. Dr. Keith holds B.Eng. (Hons.), B.Com., and M.Env. degrees from the University of Melbourne (Australia) and a Ph.D. from the MIT Engineering Systems Division.
Merieke Stevensis an Associate Professor of Operations Management at the department of Technology & Operations Management, Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University. Her research focuses on buyer-supplier relationship dynamics. She is particularly interested in the role of digital tools in supply chain management; and advantages and disadvantages of trust in supply chains. She lived in Japan for several years, where she did extensive, on-site research in the automotive industry. Dr. Stevens holds M.Sc. and M.A. degrees from the University of Amsterdam, an M.A. from Leiden University, and a Ph.D. in Operations Management from the University of Cambridge.
Deadlines
Manuscript submissions: 31 August 2020
Initial (first-round) decisions: 30 November 2020
Revised paper resubmissions: 28 February 2021
Manuscripts should conform to the instructions given in the Guide for Authors for the Journal of Operations Management
(https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/page/journal/18731317/homepage/author-guidelines).
流动性、气候变化和经济不平等
范围
运营管理（OM）是21世纪两个关键的可持续性挑战的核心：迫切减少温室气体排放以避免对气候造成灾难性破坏；以及需要改善获得“好”工作的机会，以解决全球日益严重的收入不平等问题。
这一点在运输业最为明显。交通运输是气候变化的关键因素，占全球碳排放量的21%（美国环境保护署）。运输和车辆生产系统已融入全球和地方经济的结构中，在许多地方已经成为中产阶级就业的重要来源，如卡车运输、汽车装配和公共汽车驾驶。此外，我们的交通系统所提供的流动性对土地使用、资源消耗和就业机会的模式有重要影响。
技术创新、消费者偏好的变化、公共政策和OM带来的交通运输方面的重大变化有可能破坏传统的工作和生活模式，重新分配收入，并有助于或阻碍减少温室气体排放的进程。我们的重点是运营决策如何改善交通系统的环境和社会经济影响，以及政策在实现这些改善方面可以发挥什么作用。
该主题如何从实证研究中获益
虽然气候变化和就业不平等的紧迫性得到广泛承认，尽管运输和车辆生产系统是OM研究的核心实证设置，但OM领域尚未充分认识到其在解决这些问题方面的潜力。运输系统的主要输出来自多个实体的相互作用，不协调的管理、次优的瓶颈、信息不足和不对称都是全球运输系统的特征。由于这些现象是OM的主要关注点，因此OM领域有足够的能力来解决这些问题。
我们的目标是汇集实证论文，将运营决策与政策联系起来，从环境和社会经济角度改善交通系统。欢迎研究现有政策与具体运营系统之间的相互关系，并欢迎对现有运营系统进行深入研究，提出初步的政策改进建议。
例如，作者可以研究排放交易和/或税收政策对广泛的运营决策的影响，如工艺改进、材料使用或国产化。或者，以期望的结果为出发点（例如，好的工作），作者可以研究当前的运营决策，以便提出改进建议。一个例子是关于外包的决策，它可以提高一个组织专注于其核心竞争力的能力，但另一方面也可能对谈判能力、工资、职业道路和工人的安全产生负面影响（“裂痕”）。
通过收集案例和分析最佳实践案例以及失败的努力，我们旨在为OM领域提供一个研究议程，以解决这些关键的社会问题。我们对各种实证方法持开放态度，包括实证模型、经济计量分析和定性研究。
本主题与OM研究者和实践者的相关性
我们的目标是阐明运营决策与环境和社会经济结果之间的联系。通过这样做，我们希望鼓励OM学者和实践者在研究和管理运营系统时，为所有利益相关者考虑这些结果。通过随后让决策者了解他们的工作，OM学者可以支持制定可行的改进方案，从而使他们的工作更具相关性。
我们范围内的示例子主题列表
我们的关键问题是：如何使车辆生产、流动性和运输系统变得更可持续并支持收入平等？我们尤其对探索私人行动与公共政策之间联系的贡献感兴趣。例如，什么时候对私人成本和收益进行重新界定（如对员工流动率高的公司的隐性成本的探索）足以协调公共和私人激励措施，何时需要新的公共政策？什么样的公共政策最有效？
- 上游（如自动化、人工智能、3D打印）和下游（如移动即服务、电气化、自主）创新的威胁对现有车辆供应链的气候和工作质量有何影响？
- 用于产生和传播（运营）创新的政策如何影响社会机会和产出的分配？
- 提高效率对员工有何益处？例如，分享利润/收益有助于收入平等吗？
- 不同的推进技术（如电、氢）以及引入自动驾驶汽车和卡车，对工作的数量、质量和位置可能产生什么影响？
- 现有车辆供应链对气候的影响是什么？如何减少这些影响？碳税、总量管制与交易、燃油经济性标准等不同的碳减排政策在运营上有何影响？
- 能否将效率激励为一个可持续性目标，而不仅仅是一个提高利润的目标？
- 政策制定者如何促进可持续的车辆生产行业？例如，如何鼓励工业回收和减少废物？
- “技术强制”立法对汽车行业创新的方向、过程和/或绩效有何影响？
- 过去（或将来）交通变化对交通拥堵和获得好工作的影响是什么？政策如何对此作出贡献？消费者不断变化的流动性需求如何影响工作？
- 新的数字创新将对代驾等运营管理产生什么影响？
- 在数字时代，谁应该有权访问车辆产生的大量数据（如，事故信息，旅途的起止点信息）？这种访问可能对谁创造和获取价值有什么影响？
特邀编辑
Susan Helper 是乔姆公共政策部的部门编辑和凯斯西储大学魏德海管理学院的弗兰克·特雷西·卡尔顿经济学教授。她曾任美国商务部首席经济学家和白宫幕僚。她曾担任经济系主任，并曾在牛津大学、加州大学（伯克利）、哈佛大学和麻省理工学院（MIT）担任访问学者。她的研究重点是供应链的全球化以及美国制造业如何振兴。Helper博士在哈佛大学获得经济学博士学位，在奥柏林学院获得经济学、政府和西班牙语学士学位。David R. Keith是麻省理工学院斯隆管理学院的三井职业发展教授和系统动力学助理教授。利用他在汽车行业的工作经验，他研究消费者行为、公司战略和新兴汽车技术市场的形成。他的研究考察了技术采用的空间模式、生产中的供应限制、平台竞争以及新技术对能源消耗和环境的影响等问题。Keith博士拥有工程学士（荣誉）、学士学位和环境管理硕士学位。墨尔本大学（澳大利亚）学位，麻省理工学院工程系统部博士学位。Merieke Stevens是伊拉斯谟大学鹿特丹管理学院技术与运营管理系运营管理副教授。 她的研究重点是买方与供应商关系的动态。她特别感兴趣的是数字工具在供应链管理中的作用，以及供应链信任的利弊。她在日本生活了几年，在那里她对汽车工业进行了广泛的现场研究。Stevens博士拥有阿姆斯特丹大学的理学硕士学位、莱顿大学的硕士学位和剑桥大学的运营管理博士学位。
截止日期
手稿提交：2020年8月31日
初次（第一轮）决定：2020年11月30日
修改后的论文提交：2021年2月28日
稿件应符合《运营管理杂志》作者指南中的说明(https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/page/journal/18731317/homepage/author-guidelines).