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The literature is reviewed on buffer stock allocation strategies in serial production lines. A number of experiments are conducted to analyse the behaviour of work‐in‐process inventory given that the objective is to maximise throughput. Both balanced and unbalanced lines are examined. The same analysis will be repeated for assembly type of production lines (merging lines). A key concept in this article is the “long pull” (or constant work‐in‐process inventory) Kanban system.

The production dice game is a powerful learning exercise focusing on the impact of variability and dependency on throughput and work‐in‐process inventory of flow lines. This paper seeks to extend the basic dice game along the following lines. First, it will allow operations to take place concurrently as opposed to sequentially, which works better in a classroom setting. Second, it will allow both starvation and blocking of the line. Third, it will consider balanced lines with workstations characterized by different degrees of variability. Finally, it aims to use different sets of dice in order to represent a wide range of variation coefficients of the production line. The obtained insights can be extended to a supply chain context as well. The developed game can be played on‐line and the software is freely downloadable.

The paper extends the dice game and offers an easy‐to‐use simulation tool.

The key aspect of students' learning experience is the understanding of the relationship between variability and throughput in an environment with dependent workstations and limited buffers.

A rather complicated research question is transformed into an easy‐to‐use simulation tool that in no time can be used by practitioners and students.

The aim of this review and of the papers in this special issue is to critically examine different approaches to teaching operations management (OM) in order to provoke and stimulate educators within the discipline.

The papers within this special issue include empirical assessments of a problem‐based learning enterprise resource planning (ERP) simulation; a computer‐based learning tool for material requirements planning (MRP); a simulation of assembly operations; an operations strategy innovation game; an extension of the production dice game; an experiential teaching method in different class settings; and problem‐based assessment methods in OM. A variety of data are used to support these empirical studies, including survey, interview, and observational data.

The papers within the special issue support the argument that OM is well‐suited to more applied methods of teaching focusing on the application of subject knowledge to real‐life situations through a variety of techniques.

It is hoped that this review and the papers within this special issue act to stimulate educators to re‐evaluate their approaches to teaching OM and encourage them to consider adopting experiential teaching methods, business simulations, role‐plays, group exercises, live cases, and virtual learning environments, instead of, or in addition to, the more conventional lectures that typically dominate many OM modules around the world.

A special issue on teaching OM appears timely given the significant changes to both the university landscape and to the nature of the discipline that we have witnessed over the last quarter of a century.

Businesses produce corporate sustainability information in support of the decision-making of their stakeholders through sustainability reporting. However, the use of such information has been limited because of the broadness of sustainability indicators used in sustainability reports. This study aims to identify sector-specific sustainability indicators and priorities based on the material issues of the logistics sector.

The authors conducted an exploratory study using 64 sustainability reports from the logistics sector. Qualitative content analysis was performed using Leximancer software to identify key themes and material concepts of sustainability reports.

The results showed that the most important indicators of the logistics sector are economic performance and energy, yet sustainability reports appear to focus more on reporting social sustainability information. Of the several sustainability measures, environmental and social factors dominated the reporting (8 economic, 62 environmental and 58 social). This discrepancy can also imply inconsistencies in sustainability reporting.

Identifying sector-specific indicators enables assessing the impact of sustainability issues on value creation and performance comparison among similar organizations. This is also beneficial in ensuring consistency of sustainability reporting, which is a prerequisite for policymaking in sustainable logistics.

Prior studies emphasized that no sector-specific sustainability indicators were established in the literature and standardized indicators are needed to ensure the comparability of results. This study addresses this gap by identifying sector-specific sustainability indicators based on the material issues of the logistics sector.

In 2009, the European Operations Management Association (EurOMA) celebrates its 15th anniversary and its precursor, the UK OMA, its 25th anniversary. The purpose of this paper is to review the origins and foundations of today's EurOMA and how it has progressed to being a vibrant and successful organisation.

The review draws on archived documents, especially newsletters and board minutes, as well as memories of all of those involved.

The review shows an important evolution from two groups of like minded individuals, through building annual conferences and brings these together as one. It then shows how it has evolved both through formalisation of its activities, building international links and, most importantly, developing a portfolio of activities to develop and support young researchers.

Where records are not available, the paper draws on individual memories of events from a long time ago.

As well as providing an invaluable record, it can provide a model for the development of similar organisations.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the evolution of the processes and procedures utilized by Jacksonville State University's Houston Cole Library to manage its varied electronic resources collection.

This paper is based upon the library's experiences managing electronic resources in five major categories: e‐books; electronic government documents; electronic journals; e‐reserves; and web sites.

Electronic resources librarians, an emerging specialty, must develop effective practices to manage the varied electronic resources that continue to be accessioned within most libraries.

This article provides a practical model to address these management issues.

Provides common practices for the management of electronic resources and insights into possible problems that can arise when creating a one‐stop shopping archetype for electronic resource management.

This study analyzes which worldviews on the interrelatedness of the economic, environmental and social systems are adopted in the literature on responsible management education (RME) and explores how this affects the way business schools educate future responsible managers.

The sustainability-focused relational worldviews of Kurucz et al. (2014) were used to perform a content analysis on 100 articles from the field of RME to understand which worldviews are adopted and to distill potential implications of the prevalence of such worldviews in the RME field.

In the sample, the most adopted view was the intertwined view that imagines a balance between the economic, environmental, and social system (61% of the articles). The subsuming worldview (highlighting the business case for sustainability) accounted for 8% of articles in the sample. The embedded worldview (a new paradigm that respects the limitations of the environmental and social systems) accounted for 31% of the articles in the sample. The disparate view (representing classic economic views of discrete systems) was not adopted, indicating a rather uniform belief that RME is about moving management education away from this view. Examining the evolution of views over the last 20 years, it can be observed that the embedded view is growing in popularity. The continuing prevalence of the ambiguous and malleable intertwined view in the RME literature could explain why so many RME initiatives have been taken in the last two decades, while simultaneously critics remain vocal that business schools are not preparing future managers to engage with ethics, responsibility, and sustainability (ERS).

While sustainability-focused relational worldviews have been introduced in the RME literature, this study provides empirical evidence of the prevalence of such worldviews in the literature, allowing an exploration of the implications for the field. The presence of multiple — and at times competing — worldviews adds tension to the field of RME. Seen on the trajectory of increasingly progressive worldviews, the intertwined view is not limited by economic rationalism (like the subsuming view) but also stops short of requiring a full paradigm shift (like the embedded view).

The purpose of this study is to examine how consumer personality trait impulsiveness influences trustworthiness evaluations of online-offers with different trust-assuring and trust-reducing elements by measuring the brain activity of consumers. Shoppers with high degrees of impulsiveness are referred to as hedonic shoppers, and those with low degrees are referred to as prudent consumers.

To investigate the differences between neural processes in the brains of hedonic and prudent shoppers during the trustworthiness evaluation of online-offers, the present study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and region-of-interest analysis to correlate neural activity patterns with behavioral measures of the study participants.

Drawing upon literature reviews on the neural correlates of both trust in online settings and consumer impulsiveness and using an experimental design that links behavioral and fMRI data, the study shows that consumer impulsiveness can exert a significant influence on the evaluation of online-offers. With regard to brain activation, both groups (hedonic and prudent shoppers) exhibit similar neural activation tendencies, but differences exist in the magnitude of activation patterns in brain regions that are closely related to trust and impulsiveness such as the dorsal striatum, anterior cingulate, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the insula cortex.

The data provide evidence that consumers within the hedonic group evaluate online-offers differently with regard to their trustworthiness compared to the prudent group, and that these differences in evaluation are rooted in neural activation differences in the shoppers’ brains.

Marketers need to be made aware of the fact that neurological insights can be used for market segmentation, because consumers’ decision-making processes help explain behavioral outcomes (here, trustworthiness evaluations of online-offers). In addition, consumers can learn from an advanced understanding of their brain functions during decision-making and their relation to personal traits such as impulsiveness.

Considering the importance of trust in online shopping, as well as the fact that personality traits such as impulsiveness influence the purchase process to a high degree, this study is the first to systematically investigate the interplay of online trustworthiness perceptions and differences in consumer impulsiveness with neuroscientific methods.

Many marketplace examples suggest that using gamification in the online retail shopping context boosts sales and positively affects customer loyalty. Nevertheless, more research is needed to understand the effects of digital games on consumer behavior and their underlying psychological mechanisms. Therefore, this article explores how combining games and monetary rewards impacts customer satisfaction, loyalty and word-of-mouth (WOM) intentions.

To test our hypotheses, we designed two online laboratory experiments to stimulate an online shopping situation, as gamification in online retailing has the potential to affect an important set of outcomes for service firms throughout the consumer decision process (Hofacker et al., 2016).

The results of two lab experiments demonstrate that playing a shopping-related game without monetary participation incentive positively influences all three relational outcomes because games enhance consumers' enjoyment of the overall shopping experience. However, our findings also show that monetary rewards used to incentivize game participation diminish these effects. Gamification loses its positive effects if games are combined with monetary rewards, as consumers no longer play games to derive inherent enjoyment, but rather the extrinsic motivation of receiving a discount. We draw managerial implications about how gamification effectively and profitably fosters strong customer relationships and thus increases customer lifetime value and equity.

This research is the first to investigate the combined effects of gamification and price discounts that require consumers to play the game in order to receive the discount. Focusing on an online shopping context, this article contributes to research on motivation by providing new and more nuanced insights into the psychological process underlying the gamification effects on consumer' long-term attitudes (i.e. satisfaction) and relational behaviors (i.e. positive WOM and loyalty) toward a retailer.

Based on our findings, we provide recommendations for marketers that explain how gamification can be a profitable and efficient tool to foster strong customer relationships. Retail managers should use gamification as a less costly alternative to typical price discounts.

Two laboratory experiments investigate how the separate and combined use of games and price discounts affects consumers' satisfaction, positive WOM intentions and loyalty. Playing a shopping-related game increases satisfaction with the retailer and positive WOM intentions as well as loyalty. Monetary rewards used to incentivize game participation eliminate the positive effects of gamification.