CSH Talk by Thomas Choi “Supply Networks: Dyads, Triads, Tetrads, and Beyond”

Thomas Choi (Arizona State University) will present a talk on Tuesday, June 6th, 2023 at 3 PM at the Salon.

Title: Supply Networks: Dyads, Triads, Tetrads, and Beyond

Abstract: Supply networks are made up of companies. Their relationships begin with dyads as buyers and suppliers. Still, triads are the smallest unit of a network where we can study how a node (i.e., buyer) affects a link (i.e., supplier-supplier relationship) and how a link (i.e., buyer-supplier relationship) affects another link (i.e., supplier-supplier relationship). Yet, tetrads offer us a network context in which to study additional quintessential network dynamics such as factions (i.e., two against two) and a network (i.e., triad) embedded in another network (i.e., tetrad). Ultimately, supply networks are a complex adaptive system made up of many companies operating in dynamic disequilibrium. By studying their behavioral characteristics, we may consider a few ways to help supply networks become more resilient.

Bio:

Thomas Choi is the AT&T Professor of the W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University. As a researcher of supply chain management, he is a pioneer in the study of the upstream side of supply chains, in which a buying company interfaces with many suppliers organized into various forms of networks. He has published articles in the Academy of Management Executive, Decision Sciences Journal, Decision Support Systems, Harvard Business Review, Journal of Management, Journal of Operations Management, Journal of Supply Chain Management, Production and Operations Management, and others.

He currently serves as co-director of the Complex Adaptive Supply Networks Research Accelerator (CASN-RA), an international research group of scholars interested in supply networks. He has also worked with numerous public and private organizations including LG Electronics, Samsung, Toyota, Volvo, the U.S. Department of Energy, and a federal government think tank. He has co-authored three practitioner books on supply management including one recently published on Supply Chain Financing. Most recently, he served as the lead volume editor of the Oxford Handbook of Supply Chain Management.

From 2014 to 2019, he served as the Harold E. Fearon Chair of Purchasing Management and Executive Director of CAPS Research, a joint venture between Arizona State University and the Institute for Supply Management. From 2011 to 2014, he served as co-editor in chief of the Journal of Operations Management. Currently, he is involved in developing a supply-chain research center in Ghana, Africa, as part of a $15 million project from USAID.

In 2012, he was recognized as a Distinguished Operations Management Scholar by the OM Division at the Academy of Management. Since 2018, he has been listed as a Highly Cited Researcher by Clarivate’s Web of Science for having “multiple highly cited papers that rank in the top 1% by citations for field and year.” Recently, he was ranked one among the “top 50 researchers by publication score”, based on SCM papers appearing in a set of seven leading journals over a fifteen-year period (see Table 1 in Babbar et al. 2019).