آزمایشات در زمینه تحقیقات مدیریت تامین و خرید  Experiments in purchasing and supply management research

Introduction to the method 1.1. What are experiments? Business processes, including those in purchasing and supply management (P/SM), are designed, managed, and continuously improved by people, and are therefore subject to the decision biases and bounded rationality of those people. In many cases, this human intervention with systems and processes can lead to suboptimal performance. Behavioral experiments are used to investigate the world of factors influencing human judgment and decision-making. Experiments are useful for helping to explain the decisions occurring in practice, as compared to theoretical predictions. Experiments are further useful in designing and testing mechanisms to facilitate better decision-making. Experiments allow researchers to observe directly the impact of a change in a factor (i.e., the treatment) on an outcome. There are many different types of experiments, ranging from controlled laboratory experiments, to scenario-based experiments, to field experiments. Laboratory-based experiments in the social sciences assemble participants in a common space, typically a computer laboratory, where they conduct a specific task (Webster and Sell, 2014). In operations and supply chain management, the decisions made in these tasks are often quantifiable, for example how much to order or the setting of a particular contract parameter, and the results can be compared to an analytically derived theoretical optimal. One example of a laboratory experiment conducted in the P/SM space is that of Eckerd et al. (2013), in which they evaluate the effect of psychological contract breaches and associated emotional responses on buyers’ order quantities over time.