INFORMS Open Forum

Management Science: Mid-Year Update

  • 1.  Management Science: Mid-Year Update

    Posted 06-13-2019 20:01

    Dear Colleagues,

     

    On May 20th and 21st, we celebrated the publication of the 65th volume of the journal during a conference at Questrom School of Business, Boston University. About 100 people attended the event that highlighted plenary and invited speakers across all areas of interest to the journal. Beyond the great talks of many speakers, including luminaries such as Patrick T. Harker (President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia), Rebecca M. Henderson (Harvard Business School), Wallace J. Hopp (Ross School of Business, University of Michigan), Thomas L. Magnanti (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and Alvin E. Roth (Professor of Economics at Stanford University), we had an opportunity for reflection on the journal's past, present and future. All of these talks will be covered in a subsequent special issue that allows the various speakers to provide their own perspectives on the various disciplines covered by the journal.

     

    Those of you who attended the event also heard about some of the exciting initiatives that the journal is taking:

     

    • Special Issue on Data-Driven Prescriptive Analytics: I am delighted to report that this special issue focusing on papers leveraging predictive and descriptive analytics to derive effective solutions for business problems, has attracted more than 200 submissions. It certainly helped that the special issue emphasized interdisciplinary research that brings together disciplines such as Finance, Marketing, Operations Management and Data Science.

     

    • New Special Issue on Business and Climate Change: Climate change poses major risks and opportunities for a wide array of companies and industries-and to society at large. This special issue seeks to spur research that provides critical insights to managers who need to adjust how they plan, measure, site, forecast, innovate, develop products and services, and manage supply chains in light of opportunities to mitigate climate change and adapt to climate change's physical consequences and regulatory changes. Of course, "climate change" is a "topic" that needs to be studied from several different functional lenses, including Accounting and Finance, Business Strategy, Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Operations, Organizations, and in particular, cross-disciplinary ones. For these reasons, the special issue co-editors include senior people from the various disciplines covered by the journal: Rajesh Chandy (London Business School), Glen Dowell (Cornell), Colin Mayer (Oxford), Erica Plambeck (Stanford), George Serafeim (Harvard), Michael Toffel (Harvard), Beril Toktay (Georgia Tech) and Elke Weber (Princeton). More on this in the near future.

     

    • Data and Code Disclosure Policy: The objective of the policy is to assure the availability of the material necessary to replicate the research published in the journal. Following on my blog from November 2018, where I shared a draft of the policy, I received comments from many in the community. These comments helped shape the policy which is now in place, see here. Beyond the specific details, it is important to highlight two key aspects of the policy:

                o   There is no need to replicate every element of a paper. Authors need to provide sufficient material to replicate the essential content.

                o   Authors can ask for an exception or delay. The department editor will consider the tradeoff between the benefits of enforcing the 
                      data disclosure policy versus blocking of the publication of an important paper.

      

    Finally, the article "Corporate Innovation Along the Supply Chain" by Yongqiang Chu, Xuan Tian, and Wenyu Wang published in the June issue of the journal exemplifies interdisciplinary research that brings together Finance, Innovation and Operations. My question to you is "How can we encourage more interdisciplinary work, including academic/industry collaborations?"

     

    David Simchi-Levi

    Editor-in-Chief

    Management Science

    E-mail: mseic@mit.edu

     



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    David Simchi-Levi
    Professor of Engineering Systems
    Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    Cambridge MA
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