Editorial: The Innovation and Project Management Department in the Journal of Operations Management

Abstract

The department structure at the Journal of Operations Management (JOM) has evolved since its creation in 2016 (Browning & de Treville, 2018; Guide Jr & Ketokivi, 2015b). Part of this evolution was the creation of a department for Innovation and Project Management (IPM) in May of 2019. Although the department is a recent addition, JOM has published papers on the topics of innovation and project management (PM) since its founding in 1980. To help prospective authors and reviewers understand the expectations of the IPM department, it is useful to look back at what JOM has published (e.g., the IPM topics on which the papers have focused, and the research methods they have used) and how this trajectory has changed over the years. These patterns can inform current IPM researchers and suggest opportunities for future work. As this department enters its second year of operation, we are taking the opportunity to bring the JOM community up to date on what is happening with the department and share some of our thoughts and aspirations for its growth. From 1980 through early December, 2019, 36 papers have appeared in JOM with an innovation focus (they mentioned the word “innovation” in their title or abstract and addressed an innovation-related topic; this includes only those with firm-level focus and excludes five papers with a project management [PM] focus that are included in the next section). Broadly, these 36 papers can be divided into two categories: 20 (56%) focusing on internal, firm-level factors (e.g., internal team autonomy, manufacturing-marketing coordination) and 16 (44%) focusing on factors external to the firm (e.g., supply networks, buyer–supplier relationships). The first JOM paper related to innovation was published in 1982. (See the stylized timeline in Figure 1.) Using a case-study methodology, this study focused on how the introduction of computer-integrated manufacturing (CIM) systems influenced the product-innovation process within firms. A second paper, related to process innovation, was published in JOM after a long gap in 1989. Using qualitative research techniques, this study focused on innovation in the manufacturing context. The long gap between the first two innovation-focused papers in the 1980s might have two underlying explanations. First, innovation, both product- and process-related, did not appear to be a topic within the core focus of operations management (OM) researchers during those times. This may reflect the fact that neither graduate coursework nor dissertations were focused on those topics during those years. Although the 80s was a period of a major challenge to American manufacturing by Japanese companies that required significant investment in product and process innovation, there appears to have been a significant lag between what was happening in industry during the time and when research on these topics began to appear. Given that many did not see innovation as a core topic within OM during the 80s, a number of academic studies by business school researchers relating to innovation were published in specialized outlets such as Journal of Product Innovation Management, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, R&D Management, and Industrial Marketing Management. In the 1990s, JOM published five papers relating to innovation. Two papers used data, two were conceptual and one used analytical/numerical techniques. Thus, through its first two decades, JOM published only seven papers related directly to innovation, all focusing on internal, firm-level factors. The first decade of the 2000s saw a sharp increase in this number, with about 13 papers related to innovation. The decade also marked a beginning of a stream of papers that focused on understanding how factors external to a firm affect product and process innovation, with the first paper in this stream published in 2001, followed by six papers between the 2006 and 2009 period (one each in 2006 and 2009 and two each in 2007 and 2008). The primary research design during this decade was survey-based (9), followed by conceptual (2), secondary data (1), and qualitative (1). In the 2010s, this rate increased with 16 papers related to innovation (with nine papers focusing on factors external to the firm). An explanation for the increase may be that the meaning and focus of innovation have expanded, with research going beyond product and process innovation to business model innovation, sharing economy platforms (e.g., crowdsourcing), and service innovation. For the papers published from 2010 onwards, nine used survey-based technology and six used secondary data (with one paper involving a meta-analysis). What is interesting to note is that all the survey-based papers were published in 2010–2015, whereas the papers using secondary data were all published in 2014–2019. Innovation processes within firms are often seen as representing their intellectual property and proprietary knowledge. Often, in the absence of a firm's willingness to share proprietary data from its innovation process, the survey research design serves as the research design of choice for researchers to frame questions and obtain responses. However, in recent years, the increasing availability of public and subscription-based datasets, as well as the increasing breadth and depth of empirical training across OM departments, have gradually led to more research on innovation using secondary data. JOM continues to welcome survey-based research that meets appropriate standards for rigor (Guide Jr & Ketokivi, 2015a; Ketokivi, 2019). Overall, over the past two decades, the role of inter-organizational relationships (in supply chains) has been the major focus of the innovation studies published in JOM, with the majority of these studies focusing on the supplier side and how engagement with the supplier affects innovation processes and outcomes. This is understandable because supply management and sourcing are considered core topics in OM; however, the reduced focus on customers, users, or business-to-customer relationships is concerning, especially in this age of new business models and sharing economy platforms, which rely on high engagement with consumers/users to develop products and service offerings. We believe that increasing focus on these emerging innovation topics can help shift the focus toward user engagement in innovation. To date, we have not seen any published paper relating to innovation in JOM that uses experimental methods (e.g., laboratory, field, or natural experiments). Given the growth of the behavioral OM domain and the increased use of experiments as a mode of research design for OM studies in the last decade, the use of experimental methods for innovation research in JOM would seem to be an open opportunity. Although large-scale, empirical studies using archival datasets or survey data remain an important means for testing hypotheses that have strong external validity, a deeper understanding of the causal mechanism(s) involved requires a researcher to rule out of alternative explanations, which can be achieved through carefully designed laboratory and/or field experiments or by exploiting a natural experiment setting. Indeed, it would serve both the department and the broader community of innovation researchers within the OM community to engage in greater efforts to use experimental techniques to supplement empirical studies using secondary or survey datasets, or on its own, to identify clearer causal explanations of managerial actions observed in innovation settings. Finally, compared with other areas at JOM, innovation has not been studied much with qualitative research techniques such as case studies.1 We see this as another large area of opportunity. Over the past 40 years, through early December 2019, JOM has published 66 papers that we deemed PM-related (i.e., they mentioned the word “project” in their title or abstract and addressed a PM-related topic). The types of projects addressed have varied, including all kinds of research and development (R&D), new product development (NPD), and improvement (e.g., Lean and Six Sigma) projects, sometimes within a particular industry such as information technology, software development, professional services/consulting, or construction. Of the 66 papers, three were published in 1980 (firmly establishing PM within the scope of the new OM journal), and by 1987, the total rose to eight, with all but one of these (on R&D projects) having to do with project scheduling. (See the stylized timeline in Figure 2.) The next PM paper did not appear until 6 years later, in 1993; but, this began a resurgence as 17 more PM papers emerged through the rest of the 1990s. Ten of these were about project scheduling (nine from 1993–1996, one in 1998). With the exception of one further paper in 2001 about critical chain scheduling, the topic of project scheduling disappeared from JOM (with JOM's turn towards empirical, theory-based work in the late 1990s [Meredith, Krajewski, Hill, & Handfield, 2002]). In the late 1990s, PM research in JOM began to diversify, with five papers appearing on NPD projects and two on improvement projects. Despite the term “continuous improvement,” much process improvement (Lean, Six Sigma, etc.) occurs in discrete projects. (We excluded papers that focused on process improvement rather than on management of the improvement project itself.) Six papers (1997, 1998, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2015) studied improvement projects and two (2011, 2019) dealt with applying Lean to NPD projects. R&D and NPD also tend to be packaged into discrete projects, and these have been a frequent topic in JOM since the late 1990s. Since 1997, 20 papers have dealt with NPD projects (five in the late 1990s, nine in the 2000s, and six in the 2010s), and five more with R&D projects (two in the 2000s and three in the 2010s). Other PM topics include project uncertainty and risk management (three papers), project-manager behavior (two papers), project characterization, project resource management (two papers), the phenomenon of rework, PM tools, project selection, project team management, and project termination (one paper each). A cross-cutting theme in several of the above papers deals with inter-project relationships, including multi-project scheduling (under contention for a common pool of resources), inter-project relationship management, and project portfolio management. Researchers have employed a variety of methods in the PM research published in JOM. The majority (16 of 18) of the early papers on project scheduling used analytical models and optimization. Two tutorials were also published before 2000. These early publications would no longer fit well with the journal. From 1997 to 2015, surveys have been the most prominent methodology, used by 25 of the 66 papers. Seven papers used case studies (1998, 1999, 2002, 2006, 2010, 2011, 2019). A recent trend has been to use secondary and archival datasets (five papers in 2002, 2012, 2015, 2016, 2019). Other methods used include experiments (three papers), simulation (two papers), action research, meta-analysis, and mixed methods (one paper each). JOM has also published three conceptual papers pertaining to PM (1980, 2000, 2014). The historical precedence of IPM research in the OM field since its early days (e.g., Clark & Fujimoto, 1991; Wheelwright & Clark, 1992) and the above summaries of the IPM papers published in JOM over the past 40 years highlights two key points. First, innovation and PM represent important building blocks for a firm's supply-chain processes as well as its internal processes, serving as a source of continuous growth, rejuvenation, and sustained competitive advantage for firms. Second, the importance of these two domains in regard to a firm's supply chain and its internal operations highlight the continued importance of these domains to OM researchers and practitioners (Table 1). The IPM department handles manuscripts pertaining to the management of innovation—including the design and development of products, processes, and services—and various kinds of projects (temporary organizations with one-time deliverables). Operations and supply chain management involves organizing work all along the continuum from novel to repetitive. Projects exist towards the novel side of the continuum, and managing projects requires different methods and perspectives from managing repetitive work. Innovation, product development, service development, and process improvement are typically managed as projects, as are many operational efforts in a variety of industries such as construction, aerospace, technology, software, consulting, and accounting—across private and public sectors. A marketing study, a consulting job, an audit, a merger, an information technology implementation, an improvement or change initiative, a product or service development effort, a crowdsourcing contest, and a building construction or remodeling are all examples of projects. Projects come in varied sizes, including programs and megaprojects composed of interdependent projects. Multiple projects may also be managed as a portfolio. Manuscripts submitted to the IPM department may address topics related to innovation in an OM context, project management in an OM context, or both—but “both” is an option, not a requirement. As with all submissions to JOM, articles must represent original, empirical research that is grounded in theory and relevant literature (including operations management, innovation, project management, and other relevant fields) and makes a substantial contribution. We are open to all empirical research approaches based on qualitative and quantitative data from cases, experiments, secondary sources, or surveys, and we expect submissions to adhere to high standards of rigor and practical relevance. Notwithstanding these points, it is hard to ignore the fact that 102 IPM papers out of over 1,300 published in JOM since its inception—about 8% of published papers—underrepresents the impact that these two domains carry within the OM field and practice. To this end, we hope that the creation of a new department at JOM with an IPM focus will redress this imbalance, serving both as a forum and an opportunity for more OM researchers to conduct empirical research in these domains and consider JOM as a top-tier outlet for publishing their work. The IPM department aspires to address this imbalance in three ways. First, it seeks to be an attractive venue for authors to submit empirical papers relating to IPM topics. Second, it seeks to publish innovative and original papers on all topics relating to the intersection of OM and IPM. Third, it seeks to stimulate IPM research in new, interesting, and relatively unexplored domains (we provide a few example areas in the next section) that are of direct consequence to practice and society. From its inception in May 2019 through June 2020, the department has received 37 submissions, of which 30 manuscripts have been decided and seven are in progress. Out of the 30, 12 (40%) were desk rejected without going out for review, nine (30%) were rejected after receiving reports from at least two referees and an associate editor, five (17%) were rejected with an option to resubmit (i.e., the review team collectively felt that addressing their comments would require the development of a new manuscript that is worth further consideration), and four (13%) received a first-round major revision decision. In terms of IPM manuscript throughput time, the median times are 89 days for those going through the review process and 23 days for desk rejections. Consistent with JOM's editorial philosophy (Browning & de Treville, 2018), the IPM department strives to provide constructive and developmental reviews irrespective of the decision. Beyond the focus on theoretical contribution and practical relevance, the connection to prior, published OM research is a central area of focus for the IPM department, given JOM's readership. Reviewers and readers should be able to answer the question, “Why is this relevant to OM scholars or JOM?” Not making this clear is a key reason for unfavorable reviews. The creation of the IPM department provides both a platform and an opportunity for OM scholars to conduct empirical research across these overlapping domains, revisit and reframe existing knowledge in each domain, and challenge our current understanding. Although all IPM topics are welcome for submissions, we would like to draw attention to some topics or interest areas that represent critical but understudied IPM challenges faced by businesses and society today. In contrast to projects in the private sector, where the objective is to maximize profit and create wealth for shareholders, the objective of projects in the public sector is to maximize public welfare. Although the two objectives may not always be orthogonal to each other, a focus on welfare maximization (over profit maximization) often means that public sector projects are not subjected to the same competitive pressures and scrutiny given to private-sector projects. Furthermore, public sector projects often involve multiple government agencies and third-party contractors and are typically executed within a labyrinth of government regulations, which increases coordination challenges. In light of the above points, prior research that has primarily examined IPM challenges in the private sector does not appropriately capture the breadth or the depth of such challenges in the public sector. A program is a collection of interrelated projects carried out to achieve a broader strategic goal or implement a major organizational change. Programs are also referred to colloquially as “large projects,” and in practice, the line between a program and a large project is often blurred. Program management requires the coordinated execution of multiple projects (with potentially different stakeholders) that typically compete with one another for scarce organizational resources. Notwithstanding the importance of programs for firm growth and survival, the dynamics of program execution and the challenges associated with program management have received limited attention in the OM and broader management literature. Many projects do not plan enough; many plan poorly. Furthermore, some projects invest too much in a particular plan and efforts to adhere to it, even after its rationale has been overcome by events and the project's requirements have changed considerably. How much planning is enough for different types of projects, and what project characteristics make a difference? What methods, tools, and practices increase planning effectiveness, and under what conditions? And how should planning occur in agile projects? Answering these questions will likely require empirical studies of a variety of projects (e.g., engineering, information technology, infrastructure development) across industries with different clockspeeds, and the development and the operationalization of measures relating to the methodologies and outcomes of project planning. An innovation contest is a specific kind of project that is typically carried out in a digital, internet-based platform. A central advantage of innovation contests is their ability to produce a large number of diverse solutions to problems within a short period of time by allowing many individuals and organizations to participate simultaneously in idea generation and problem solving. Such contests have become increasingly popular among firms across many industries as an alternative mechanism to reduce the search costs associated with finding solutions to complex business and technical problems. As the use of innovation contests continues to grow in industry, academic scholars are increasingly focusing their research efforts on: (1) understanding the dynamics of problem solving among participating contestants and (2) identifying contest mechanisms or characteristics that incentivize contestants to develop effective solutions—two areas which are of much interest to the IPM department. Developing economies present a large and thriving consumer base for both multinational and domestic firms, which are increasingly investing in innovation and R&D projects to cater specifically to these consumers. Yet the infrastructural challenges (e.g., inadequate physical infrastructure, lower average skill level of workforce) and the bureaucratic hurdles (e.g., weak intellectual property laws, corruption, limited government support for start-up firms) prevalent in developing economies make the conditions less favorable for planning and executing such projects. Investigating these infrastructural and bureaucratic hurdles could advance IPM knowledge. The above list of topics is merely indicative rather than comprehensive, highlighting relevant and under-researched areas that merit greater attention by IPM researches in OM. Several other PM-specific topics are also noted elsewhere (Browning, 2017). The IPM department is open to papers employing almost any kind of empirical method as well as empirically grounded analytical papers, conceptual papers, and literature reviews (as described in Browning & de Treville, 2018)—although, currently, IPM papers using intervention-based research (IBR) methods will usually be handled by the IBR department (q.v., Chandrasekaran, de Treville, & Browning, 2020). The formation of the IPM department represents an opportunity for building upon the productive and impactful trajectory of past IPM research published in JOM. We are grateful to the authors, reviewers, and associate editors over the past year who have contributed to this department, and we look forward to this department's continued development as a leading avenue for empirical IPM research.