Introduction
The scholarly exchange of knowledge in Operations Management by Kevin Linderman and Aravind Chandrasekaran is a journal article about the ongoing effort to explain how this field relates to other disciplines. This article reviews a number of studies that have placed an importance on operations management. This article builds on these studies and evaluates the development of ideas within operations management sources as well as other subjects in the field of management.
The selected articles run from 1998–2007. In an effort to show the effectiveness of the exchange of academic ideas, this article employs Journal citation metrics. Consequently, this journal manifests the ability to interchange with other management discourses. Nevertheless, this journal bears a number of limitations such as high frequency of self-citations as opposed to other management subjects. In this light, this paper seeks to provide a critical summary of this article’s strengths and weakness. This paper will also identify various areas that need improvement in an effort to increase its effectiveness.
Summary
This journal seeks to show how scholarly progress can be advanced through the exchange of ideas across different disciplines. This journal evaluates two factors: (a) how the field of operations management shares ideas with other management discourses, and (b) the percentage of citation sharing both within and across disciplines. The authors suggest that scholarship entails consistent development and exchange of ideas that build over time. These authors acknowledge that most of the existing knowledge is a reflection of what transpired in the past.
These authors insist that scholarship in the discourse of operations management should reflect the progress experienced in other fields. This journal suggests the focus on operations management has been narrow and has constrained the growth of this field of study. The authors suggest that scholars of operations management have failed to go beyond disciplinary borders when evaluating issues. Scholarly research on operations management should import as well as export knowledge from other disciples (Miemczyk 15).
Consequently, the exchange of ideas within the field of operations management, and across operations management and other fields develops as the main theme of this journal. The measurement of the exchange of ideas within and across Operational Management is determined using the Journal Citation data. This article shows the essence of citation metrics in determining the exchange of ideas between subjects. For example, the Citation Proportion (CP) and the Balance of Trade (BOT) assist in measuring inter-disciplinary citations.
The importance of exchanging academic ideas through journals is inevitable. This assertion holds because journals offer a reliable platform for communicating, spreading, and storing academic ideas. Ideally, this journal suggests that operations management seems more flexible to share ideas with journals outside its scope but less flexible to share ideas with journals inside within its discourse.
Significance of this topic
This topic is important in various ways including its contribution to the scholarly field. Operations management is a topic concerned with designing and coordinating the process of production and other business activities in the manufacturing of goods and services (Shafer and Smunt 349). Operations management entails the process of converting inputs into products.
Thus, a review of articles related to this field provides a current state of understanding concerning a certain field. This topic explores and explains studies previously published by scholars to provide an understanding of how the subject of operations management relates to other disciplines (Linderman and Chandrasekaran 363). This systemic review is in the form of secondary literature that is established through defined criteria.
This topic is informative since it highlights factors that have hindered the growth of the field of operations management. For instance, the authors suggest that studies in this field have been too narrow and independent. Besides, this journal is vital to reference material for business-based scholars. However, scholars from different fields should interact and share ideas since problems experienced in the real world by managers emanate from various disciplines (Gao, Li, and Clarke 15). Although this journal bears some limitations, it addresses the intellectual as well as the academic concerns of the wide scholarly business fraternity.
Strengths
This review of literature manifests both academic and practical relevance embedded in this article. This assertion holds because the article adds to the on-going scholarly debates on relevant topics on operations management and other related subjects such as finance and marketing. This journal attempts to communicate to the readers the areas in operations management that need to be changed or improved to increase its depth and validity.
The authors suggest that there is a need to better measure a scholarly activity and improved tools rather than simple counts such as publication counts. This journal covers the immediate empirical context in which the topic of operational management transcends. This journal shows generality as well as an empirical discipline.
The research methodology employed in this study is reliable and transparent. The authors’ claims consistently and plausibly support the premises. This journal is aimed at various major audiences including members of the scholarly fraternity who seek to be kept updated about the intra-disciplinary and interdisciplinary exchange of ideas. The journal offers scholars an opportunity to carry more interdisciplinary research by creating a broader understanding of advancements in other disciplines. The review was extensive, and it was analyzed logically into two key parts, viz. scholarly exchange within the discipline and scholarly exchange between disciplines.
This journal is vital to scholars who intend to update knowledge in the field of operations management as well as those intending to develop inter-disciplinary exchange within and across disciplines. This article highlights the quality and depth of scholarly exchange in the field of operations management, thus, assisting academicians to locate literature based on reliability.
The paper has shown that Operations Management Journal articles are a hybrid of ideas across an array of management disciplines. Ideally, the rationale for the study was to examine the interdisciplinary citation within and between disciplines a subject that had not been addressed. Thus, this journal seemed to close a gap in the literature. This study makes the use of tables and graphs to present and analyze results.
Weaknesses
Even though this journal unveils many fascinating insights about Operational Management, it has major drawbacks. The citation data used does not cover enough interdisciplinary scope. Furthermore, it lacks enough cases and poor organization of the journal. Additional journals could have been used both from within and between disciplines.
Despite the inter-disciplinary nature of this journal, it still manifests insufficient cross-communication within the disciplines. However, facilitating the diversity of literature exchanges within Operations Management, as well as ensuring more cross-disciplinary research with other management subjects should promote the scholarly advancement of this topic (Gantman 155). These authors suggest that constrained research can ignore the contributions from other disciplines that could unearth issues on a topic of concern.
This journal is to some extent difficult to follow and hard for an average reader to comprehend what the author attempts to convey. For instance, the tables and graphs are not well explained. Thus, a reader can easily get confused and frustrated when attempting to figure out the authors’ meaning. This journal fails to offer a clear definition of the measurement tools recommended for measuring citation exchange within and across disciplines. For example, the authors talk of the Carnegie-Mellon Citation Index and Science Direct Digital Library, but fail to define these tools but merely offer a cheap explanation of its applicability.
This journal lacks a clear methodology in how it arrives at the findings. Even though the authors rely on secondary sources to generalize, it is essential to adopt a defined methodology to increase the validity (Barratt, Choi, and Li 332). This aspect brings the question of the journals credibility and contribution to academic knowledge.
Improvements
Factors influencing operations management curricula have been sidelined in this journal. The journal concentrates on an exchange of scholarly knowledge in the field of management, finance, and marketing while there are other fields such as psychology and economics are important. Thus, this study should have illustrated how other fields interrelate with Operations Management.
Even though this journal shows that the extent of citation exchange within and across disciplines, it fails to offer suggestions on how the persisting gaps in citation exchange could be filled. This journal is constrained on a few selected subjects. However, an extension of this analysis would focus beyond management subjects and explore the scholarly exchange of knowledge among operations management and other key subjects including sociology, economics, and psychology. This assertion holds because operations management seems to import ideas from these disciplines and fails to export.
The authors found that the majority of scholarly exchange in operations management is unbalanced suggesting that future research should focus on identifying how Operations could benefit from and contribute to other fields in relatively equal measure. The analysis provided is based on articles that are not current. Research that is more current is needed to establish the gaps in scholarly exchange.
It is also important to identify measures to fill these gaps. The increasing diversity of scholarly exchange should target a wide variety of disciplines but not necessarily the current focus on management disciplines. Future research should reflect the collective operations management strategies to identify patterns and gaps in the literature about the scholarly exchange of knowledge.
Conclusions
This critical review has examined an article in the Journal of Operations Management by Kevin Linderman and Aravind Chandrasekaran. The remarks made by these authors are very informative as they create the need for more research on a topic that is yet to gain popularity among scholars across the world. Even though this journal unearths a number of interesting insights, it lacks balance in selecting the literature to be reviewed.
However, this journal is weakened by the overly technical structure and lack of extensive analysis, particularly when dealing with tables and graph illustrations. Ideally, the authors have made a significant contribution by exploring how scholarly exchange has affected the field of Operations Management.
Works Cited
Barratt, Mark, Thomas Choi, and Mei Li. “Qualitative Case Studies in Operations Management: Trends, Research Outcomes, and Future Research Implications.” Journal of Operations Management 29.4 (2011): 329-342. Print.
Gantman, Ernesto. “International Differences of Productivity in Scholarly Management Knowledge.” Scientometrics 80.1 (2009): 153-165. Print.
Gao, Fei, Meng Li, and Steve Clarke. “Knowledge, Management, and Knowledge Management in Business Operations.” Journal of Knowledge Management 12.2 (2008): 3-17. Print.
Linderman, Kevin, and Aravind Chandrasekaran. “The Scholarly Exchange of Knowledge in Operations Management.” Journal of Operations Management 28.4 (2010): 357-366. Print.
Miemczyk, Joe. “An Agenda for Sustainable Operations and Supply Chain Management Research.” Business Journal of Operations Management 9.2 (2012): 15-25. Print.
Shafer, Scott, and Timothy Smunt. “Empirical Simulation Studies in Operations Management: Context, Trends, and Research Opportunities.” Journal of Operations Management 22.4 (2004): 345-354. Print.