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Journal of Operations Management 18 2000 601–604
www.elsevier.comrlocaterdsw
Editorial
Configurations in operations: an emerging area of study
1. Introduction
The purpose of this special issue is to demonstrate how configuration research methods can be applied to a wide range of Operations Management topics. As a quick review, configuration models areA multi-dimensional profiles used to describe organizational,
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strategy, or process typesB Bozarth and McDermott,
.
1998, p. 427 . Included under the configuration
ban-Ž
ner are typologies, which describe ideal types e.g.
.
Miles and Snow, 1978; Hill, 1994 and taxonomies, which classify existing organizational phenomena
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into distinct categories e.g. Miller and Roth, 1994 . Many of the phenomena OM researchers seek to study — manufacturing and services strategies, AMT or TQM adoption patterns, supply chain structures — fit naturally into the configuration perspective.
In a 1998 Journal of Operations Management paper, Bozarth and McDermott examined the current state of configuration research in the manufacturing strategy area. Among other findings, the authors observed that:
Ø Configuration models are well suited to studying
complex, multivariate organizational phenomena.
Ø The methods for conducting configuration
re-search are already well established in other disci-plines, and could be easily applied to Operations Management issues.
Ø The Operations area as a whole is being held
back by the under-utilization of configuration re-search methods and the resulting lack of rigor-ously tested taxonomies and typologies.
From these observations came the idea for a special issue dedicated to configuration research in
Operations Management. Specifically, we wanted to encourage our colleagues to adopt and use configura-tion research methods — including the development and testing of taxonomies and typologies — to attack many of the important research questions fac-ing our area.
While dedicating a special issue to a particular research approach may seem unusual, there were good reasons for doing so. The first is the noticeable gap between the questions many OM researchers are asking and the tools used to test these questions. Evidence of this gap can be found in the manufactur-ing strategy area, where the majority of typologies
Ž
and taxonomies remain untested Bozarth and
Mc-.
Dermott, 1998 due in large part to a lack of famil-iarity with configurational approaches.
The second reason is more subtle. Many of us are familiar with the saying, Ato someone with a ham-mer, everything looks like a nail.B The traditional research tools, or Ahammers,B used by OM re-searchers are often ill-suited to studying multivariate, complex organizational phenomena. As a result, we too often structure our research questions to fit the tools at hand, leading to a preponderance of models withAa limited number of variables . . . and assump-tions of linearity driven more by the statistical
tech-Ž
nique than by theoryB Bozarth and McDermott,
.
1998 .
2. The special issue
The mission of this special issue is to illustrate the power of configuration models and research meth-ods, and the variety of research questions that can be
0272-6963r00r$ - see front matterq2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
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addressed by them. The call for papers resulted in over 30 submissions. Some papers were returned after an initial screening by the guest editors, not because they were poor papers, but because they did not fit the special issue’s mission. Papers that fit the mission were subjected to a double-blind review process, following the Journal of Operations Man-agement guidelines. In addition to JOM’s regular set of review questions, guest reviewers evaluated each paper’s configuration model on a number of dimen-sions. Typologies were rated on their level of theo-retical interest, degree of development, testability, and ability to offer important insights. Taxonomies were rated on slightly different criteria, including their ability to generate important insights,
generaliz-Ž
ability, the classifying variables used were they
.
relevant to the research question at hand? , and the research methodology. Papers that made it past the first set of reviews were then assigned to a guest associate editor, again using a double-blind format. The guest editors made the final decisions on which papers would be included in the special issue.
3. The articles
The articles that appear in this special issue span a wide range of topics, yet, all illustrate nicely how the configuration perspective can be applied to opera-tions. InAApproaches to Mass Customization: Con-figurations and Empirical Evidence,B Rebecca Duray and Peter Ward develop and validate an em-pirical model that classifies mass customizers based on consumer involvement in design and product modularity. The authors then explore the different approaches to mass customization within this classi-fication scheme by comparing the manufacturing tactics of each type. Process and performance impli-cations of the various mass customization configura-tions are also discussed.
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Ravi Kathuria Competitive priorities and man-agerial performance: a taxonomy of small
manufac-.
turers uses multiple respondent data from 98 manu-facturing units to develop a taxonomy of small manufacturers based on their emphasis on several competitive priorities. Kathuria’s results suggest that
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the best performing manufacturers in terms of
cus-.
tomer satisfaction also emphasize the broadest set of competitive priorities.
Services are also well represented. InA Configura-tions of Low-Contact Services,B Rohit Verma and Scott Young use cluster analysis to develop a taxon-omy of low-contact services, an area that the litera-ture typically treats as a single homogeneous group. The authors go on to test the link between each taxon’s objectives, competitive priorities, and
perfor-Ž
mance. Rich Metters and Vicente Vargas A
Typol-.
ogy of De-coupling Strategies in Mixed Services develop a typology of de-coupling strategies for mixed services that involve both front and back-office tasks. Their typology segments strategies based on
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the strategic operational focus service or cost and on the level of de-coupling between front- and back-office activities. The typology offers insights into different ways that service firms can structure their operations, and demonstrates how service firms can de-couple operations in various ways to achieve diverse objectives, yet, maintain equifinality in per-formance.
Two papers deal directly with planning and con-trol activities within manufacturing organizations. Daina Dennis and Jack Meredith examine a group of industries that has received relatively little study in
AAn Analysis of Process Industry Production and Inventory Systems.B They classify the P & IM sys-tems of 19 process industry firms as simple, com-mon, WIP controlled or computerized. The data is gathered using in-depth field studies. Dennis and Meredith’s findings lend important insights to firms in the process industries — those that add value by mixing, separating, forming, andror chemical reac-tions by either batch or continuous mode.
Patrik Jonsson examines the maintenance prac-tices of 253 Swedish manufacturing in his paper,
ATowards an Holistic Understanding of Disruptions in Operations Management.B Three approaches to maintenance are identified: AProactive MaintainersB
that emphasize preventive maintenance policies, AIT MaintainersB that rely on computerized, company-wide integrated information systems and A Mainte-nance LaggersB that lagged on all the maintenance dimensions. Jonsson also finds small performance differences across the groups and suggests which approaches are best for different operations strate-gies.
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Greg Stock and Mohan Tatikonda A typology of
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the premise that technological uncertainty will deter-mine the most effective form of interaction between two organizations involved in a technology transfer effort. The authors draw from several literature streams to build a typology of fourAtransfer process typesB and illustrate various types using real life examples. They end by describing how the typology could be tested in future works.
4. Linkages between taxonomical and typological research
In discussions with our colleagues, we often run up against the common misconception that tax-onomies areAempiricalB while typologies are A con-ceptual.BYet, taxonomies do not have to be
empiri-Ž
cally tested although there are strong reasons for
.
doing so , and typologies can be tested quite rigor-ously, as the general strategy literature has
demon-Ž
strated Doty et al., 1993; Kotha and Vadlamani,
.
1995; Venkatraman and Prescott, 1990 . Rather, the fundamental distinction is that taxonomies provide
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comprehensive classification systems including
.
AgoodB andAbadB phenomena while typologies only describe ideal types.
That said, the articles in this special issue demon-strate how researchers can address either taxonomi-cal or typologitaxonomi-cal issues, or both. On the one hand,
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Kathuria manufacturing strategies , Dennis and
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Meridith P & IM systems and Jonsson maintenance
.
policies focus exclusively on developing tax-onomies. No one will confuse Kathuria’sAStartersB
and Jonsson’sAMaintenance LaggersBfor ideal types.
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At the other extreme, Metters and Vargas’ mixed
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services and Stock and Tatikonda’s inward
technol-.
ogy transfer concentrate on the development of theoretically sound typologies. Neither article pur-ports to provide a taxonomy that would classify all phenomena, good and bad.
The remaining two articles demonstrate how taxo-nomical and typological questions can be addressed in the same work. Duray and Ward and Verma and Young both use clustering techniques to classify existing organizations. As such, each offers a poten-tial taxonomical model. Yet, each paper also in-cludes a discussion and analysis of the links between organizational characteristics and performance. This
represents a first step toward developing multidimen-sional profiles of ideal types.
It is our hope that this special issue is only the beginning. As is witnessed by the articles presented here, the configurational approach can and should play a central role in the way research is done in the field as we move forward. The nature of operations will encourage researchers to expand our efforts to also include the types of multi-organizational
phe-Ž .
nomenon e.g. supply chains that are now so critical to effective management practice. Further, this type of research clearly lends itself to models of change processes within operations, and the states firms pass through along paths toward improvement. As we become more comfortable with this approach, it is our hope that this will become a fruitful path of research, bringing both increasing rigor and rele-vance to our field.
Acknowledgements
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Carolina State University; Curt McLaughlin, Univer-sity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Satish Mehra, University of Memphis; Larry Menor, University of Western Ontario; Susan Meyer, University of Min-nesota; Janis Miller, Clemson University; Ashok Mukherjee, Case Western Reserve University; Mar-garet Noble, Bryant College; Rocky Newman, Mi-ami University; Winter Nie, Thunderbird University; Scott O’Leary-Kelly, University of Arkansas; Mark Pagell, Kansas State University; Karen Papke-Shields, Salisbury State University; Fay Payton, North Carolina State University; Madeleine Pullman, Southern Methodist University; Steven Rosenthal, Boston University; Manus Rungtusanatham, Arizona State University; Hossein Safizadeh, Boston College; Danny Samson, University of Melbourne; Joseph Sarkis, Clark University; Ken Schultz, Indiana Uni-versity; Dan Steele, University of South Carolina; Gregory Stock, Northern Illinois University; Morgan Swink, Michigan State University; Mohan Tatikonda, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Gyula Vastag, Michigan State University; Rohit Verma, DePaul University; Robert Vokurka, Texas A & M University; Steve Walton, Emory University; John Wacker, Iowa State University; Michael Way, Indi-ana University; Darryl Wilson, Florida State Univer-sity; Gregg Young, North Carolina State UniverUniver-sity; Bill Youngdahl, Thunderbird University. In addition, we would also like to thank Rebecca Duray, Anil Khurana and Jan Hartley, our guest associate editors, for their hard work and thoughtful assistance in this process. Finally, we would like to thank Jack Mered-ith, the Editor-in-Chief of JOM for his guidance in managing this process.
References
Bozarth, C., McDermott, C., 1998. Configurations in manufactur-ing strategy: a review and directions for future research. Journal of Operations Management 16, 427–439.
Doty, D.H., Glick, W.H., Huber, G.P., 1993. Fit, equifinality, and organizational effectiveness: a test of two configurational theo-ries. Academy of Management Journal 36, 1196–1250. Hill, T., 1994. Manufacturing Strategy: Text and Cases. 2nd edn.
Irwin, Homewood, IL.
Kotha, S., Vadlamani, B., 1995. Assessing generic strategies: an empirical investigation of two competing typologies in dis-crete manufacturing industries. Strategic Management Journal 16, 75–83.
Miles, R.E., Snow, C.C., 1978. Organizational Strategy, Structure, and Process. McGraw-Hill, New York.
Miller, J., Roth, A., 1994. A taxonomy of manufacturing strate-gies. Management Science 40, 285–304.
Venkatraman, N., Prescott, J., 1990. Environment–strategy coalignment: an empirical test of its performance implications. Strategic Management Journal 11, 1–23.
Kenneth K. Boyer) Department of Marketing and Supply Chain Management, Eli Broad Graduate School of Management, Michigan State UniÕersity,
East Lansing, MI 48824-1122, USA
Cecil Bozarth,1
Department of Business Management, College of Management, North Carolina State UniÕersity,
32 Nelson Hall, Box 7229 Raleigh, NC 27695-7229, USA
Christopher McDermott2
The Lally School of Management and Technology, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY 12180-3590, USA E-mail address: mcderc@rpi.edu
)Corresponding author. Tel.:q1-517-353-6381.
1
Tel.:q1-919-515-4511; fax:q1-919-515-6943.
2
