PhD students honored at European conference on operations management

At the 2011 annual EurOMA conference – Europe’s leading conference on operations management – two PhD students of the Faculty of Economics and Business were honored. Both PhD students are part of the research programme OPERA (Operations Management and Operations Research).

Justin Drupsteen received the Harry Boer Best Student Paper Award for his paper Integrative practices in hospitals and their impact on patient flow. The award is granted to the best paper written and presented at the EurOMA conference authored by a PhD student. The award is supported by Emerald, publisher of the International Journal of Operations & Production Management. Full papers are judged on their contribution towards the advancement of theory and practice of Operations Management.

In the paper the integrative practices concerning planning and control in three hospitals are investigated. Contrary to most studies, this study assesses the effects on a patient’s total throughput time performance, rather than performance for a single stage. The study’s results indicate positive effects on patient flow due to information sharing, capacity commitment and integrative planning.

Harry Boer Highly Commended Student Paper Award

As runner-up Boyana Petkova received the Harry Boer Highly Commended Student Paper Award for her paper Supply chain integration under resource dependence; How powerful buyers and suppliers shape integration as the value of the relationship rises. She shows that powerful buyers and suppliers shape the collaboration between them increasingly different as the value of the relationship rises. Buyers pull critical resources down the chain while suppliers try to protect their competitive advantage by maintaining a hands-off approach to such collaboration. Boyana uses a combination of survey and case study to obtain insights into the collaboration behavior of firms in the Dutch (high-tech) manufacturing industries.

For further information

Justin Drupsteen, tel. (050) 363 8556, j.drupsteen rug.nl

Boyana Petkova, tel. (050) 363 6682, b.n.petkova rug.nl