Suvrat Dhanorkar, PhD Candidate, Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota will present a talk in the Operations Management
Research Seminars
Academic Areas Operations Management
Suvrat Dhanorkar, PhD Candidate, Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota
December 24, 2014
| 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM | Wednesday
AC-2 New Mini Lecture Theatre, ISB Campus, Gachibowli, Hyderabad, India, 500 111
Open to Public
Topic: “Online Intermediaries for Coordinating Industrial Surplus Chains Access, Uncertainty, Design and Policy"
The abstract of the talk is given below:
Online Material & Waste Exchanges (OMWEs) are internet-based B2B markets that coordinate transactions of surplus materials, by-products and waste across industrial facilities.Collectively, OMWEs possess the potential to repurpose millions of lbs. of industrial materials and save billions of dollars in disposal fees and inventory costs. Unfortunately, OMWE’s also have several challenges that have limited their efficiency. We analyze novel transaction-level data from one such OMWE (MNExchange.org) combined with other archival public records on county-level repurposing and disposal statistics to generate insights into the design and development of OMWEs.In the first study, we investigate factors that reduce the buyers’ uncertainty and increase the sellers’ commitment to the OMWE. First, we show that regional repurposing policies and alternatives have a complementary effect on sellers’ commitment towards OMWEs, resulting in increased OMWE exchanges. However, regional disposal policies and alternatives have a substitution effect on sellers’ commitment, resulting in reduced exchange success. Further, greater product and transaction information reduces the buyer’s uncertainty and increases exchange success. Finally, higher familiarity between the buyer-seller pair and familiarity with the OMWE system leads to higher likelihood of exchange success. In the second study, we exploit a quasi-experiment in our empirical setting (MNExchange.Org) to examine the effects of an operational policy change which eliminated human intermediaries. We show that elimination of this form of intermediary had dire consequences on the market efficiency as measured by (i) likelihood of successful transactions and (i) time to a successful transaction. Although the overall effect was significant, we also find more nuanced effects for certain types of items. Specifically, process-use (relative to end-use), negotiable (relative to free) and one-time (relative to recurring) items faced significantly greater transactional challenges
The abstract of the talk is given below:
Online Material & Waste Exchanges (OMWEs) are internet-based B2B markets that coordinate transactions of surplus materials, by-products and waste across industrial facilities.Collectively, OMWEs possess the potential to repurpose millions of lbs. of industrial materials and save billions of dollars in disposal fees and inventory costs. Unfortunately, OMWE’s also have several challenges that have limited their efficiency. We analyze novel transaction-level data from one such OMWE (MNExchange.org) combined with other archival public records on county-level repurposing and disposal statistics to generate insights into the design and development of OMWEs.In the first study, we investigate factors that reduce the buyers’ uncertainty and increase the sellers’ commitment to the OMWE. First, we show that regional repurposing policies and alternatives have a complementary effect on sellers’ commitment towards OMWEs, resulting in increased OMWE exchanges. However, regional disposal policies and alternatives have a substitution effect on sellers’ commitment, resulting in reduced exchange success. Further, greater product and transaction information reduces the buyer’s uncertainty and increases exchange success. Finally, higher familiarity between the buyer-seller pair and familiarity with the OMWE system leads to higher likelihood of exchange success. In the second study, we exploit a quasi-experiment in our empirical setting (MNExchange.Org) to examine the effects of an operational policy change which eliminated human intermediaries. We show that elimination of this form of intermediary had dire consequences on the market efficiency as measured by (i) likelihood of successful transactions and (i) time to a successful transaction. Although the overall effect was significant, we also find more nuanced effects for certain types of items. Specifically, process-use (relative to end-use), negotiable (relative to free) and one-time (relative to recurring) items faced significantly greater transactional challenges
