A food retailer incurs expiration waste (EW) at its store when a perishable product crosses its expiration date without being sold. One frequent scenario for EW occurrence is when units of a given product with multiple expiration dates are simultaneously available on store shelves. In such...

A contingent free shipping (CFS) policy offers free shipment of an order only if it satisfies a pre-specified threshold amount. Such a policy may induce customers to pad below-threshold orders to meet the threshold. On the one hand, such padded orders economize the retailer's logistics cost; on...

This dissertation is based on three essays that study operational strategies to manage environmental uncertainty. In essay 1, we examine the costs and benefits of different supply chain structures in managing multi-product demand uncertainty. In particular we analyze the strategic performance of...

This paper provides a novel explanation for the use of supply chain intermediaries. We find that even in the absence of the well-known transactional and informational advantages of mediation, intermediaries improve supply chain performance. In particular, intermediaries facilitate responsive...

The value of delayed differentiation (also known as postponement) for a monopolist has been extensively studied in the operations literature. We analyze the case of (imperfectly) competitive markets with demand uncertainty, wherein the choice of supply chain configuration (i.e., early or delayed...

In a wide variety of settings, organizations generate a number of possible solutions to a problem--ideas--and then select a few for further development. We examine the effectiveness of two group structures for such tasks--the team structure, in which the group works together in time and space,...