The Handbook of Behavioral Operations

8Integration of Behavioral and Operational Elements Through System Dynamics

J. Bradley Morrison¹ and Rogelio Oliva²

¹ Brandeis International Business School, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, USA

² Mays Business School, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA

8.1 Introduction

Operations management (OM) research has long recognized that even core organizational processes such as production and scheduling encompass interactions between multiple organizational functions and other organizations and actors, including customers, suppliers, workers, competitors, and financial markets (Sterman et al. 2015). Behavioral operations, i.e. the study of human behavior and cognition and their impacts on operating systems and processes (Gino and Pisano 2008, p. 679), explicitly attempts to develop parsimonious theories to explain the outcomes of complex interactions among actors in the context of processes aimed at the development, production, delivery, and distribution of products and services (Weiss and Gershon 1989). The behavioral perspective, however, recognizes that actors in these situations have different motivations, biases, and limitations. Thus, the behavioral operations perspective requires the explicit integration of two traditionally separate disciplines: operations management and the behavioral sciences.¹ However, as these disciplines evolved in separate contexts and in order to address different concerns, they developed different methods and standards of evidence and ...