Field experiments in operations management

• Main Authors: GAO, Yang, LI, Meng, SUN, Shujing
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2022
• Subjects: review; field experiments; methodology; A/B test; IT; Databases and Information Systems; Operations and Supply Chain Management
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/7488; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/sis_research/article/8491/viewcontent/SSRN_id4049267.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

While the field experiment is a powerful and well-established method to investigate causal relationships, operations management (OM) has embraced this methodology only in recent years. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the existing OM literature leveraging field experiments and serves as a one-stop guide for future application of field experiments in the OM area. We start by recapping the characteristics that distinguish field experiments from other common types of experiments and organizing the relevant OM studies by topic. Corresponding to the commonly overlooked issues in field experiment-based OM studies, we then provide a detailed roadmap, ranging from experimental design and implementation to post-experiment analysis. We outline the methodological issues and corresponding solutions when applying field experiments, and conclude by identifying future research directions from an OM perspective