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Larry Menor is an Associate Professor at the Ivey Business School. He received his doctorate from the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Professor Menor's research interests focus primarily on relevant service system management and operations strategy issues, and are cross-disciplinary in nature. His conceptual and empirical insights on new service development, in particular, have contributed to advancing scholarly theory and understanding in the service operations and services marketing disciplines, and has also informed management practice. Among his current research efforts, he is actively involved as Principal (and sole) Investigator in a three-year project titled "Innovating the Arts and Cultural Organization: An Examination of North American Orchestras". This project allows Larry to examine a topic of both research and personal interest, and is his second SSHRC funded study. He is also actively engaged in contributing to the advancement of IBM's Service Science initiative.
Professor Menor's research has garnered a number of accolades, and is published in top-tier academic journals such as Journal of Operations Management, Journal of Service Research, Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, and Production and Operations Management, and managerial outlets such as the Ivey Business Journal. Professor Menor currently serves as a Senior Editor for Production and Operations Management and Associate Editor for Decision Sciences and Journal of Operations Management. He also currently serves or has served on the Editorial Review Boards for Service Industries Journal, Manufacturing and Service Operations Management and Academy of Management Review. He served as a Board Member of the Production and Operations Management Society. Professor Menor has written a number of widely used teaching cases including "The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra" and "Dabbawallahs of Mumbai (A) and (B)", and co-edited (with Professor Robert Klassen) the Sage Publication book titled Cases on Operations Management.
Abstract: Purpose – This research proposes and illustrates a conditional view of lean supply chain
management (LSCM) based upon the contextual contingent alignment between lean performance
objectives (i.e., a contextual factor) and supply chain management challenges (i.e., a contingent
condition) in the selection of lean approaches (i.e., a contingent event).
Design/methodology/approach – Drawing on the notions of contingency-based practices and
strategic fit, our LSCM reconceptualization jointly considers contextual and contingency factors
in specifying what lean approaches to adopt. We illustrate using the Delphi method the practical
relevance of our LSCM reconceptualization for the Canadian agri-food industry.
Findings – We highlight that LSCM is founded upon alignment associations between specific lean
performance objectives and supply chain challenges as well as their influence on the selection of
suitable lean approaches. Our empirical illustration shows that those alignment associations do not
occur at random, which supports our conditional view of LSCM.
Research limitations/implications – The contextual contingent view of LSCM can inform future
scholarly inquiry and can reframe practically relevant middle-range theorization on LSCM.
Practical implications – The Delphi method-derived descriptive model of LSCM provides
guidance to managers in the Canadian agri-food sector in identifying suitable lean approaches to
adopt given the specific performance objective(s) pursued and supply chain management
challenge(s) encountered.
Originality/value –We advance scholarly theorization and managerial understanding of LSCM
by providing a conditional conceptualization that jointly considers relevant contextual and
contingency factors that hitherto have not been examined. In ascribing what lean approach(es) to
adopt to the alignment associations influence between lean performance objective(s) pursued and
supply chain management challenge(s) encountered, we provide compelling conceptual and empirical support for the joint conditional view of LSCM.
Abstract: We study service triads by examining the member-to-member exchanges underpinning service formation, functioning, and feedback. A service triad comprises two serviced customers from the supplier's standpoint and two service providers from the end user's standpoint, which can cause operational complexity and challenges. We view the service triad as an operating entity and study four information-rich cases to improve our understanding of this operational complexity. Leveraging scholarly knowledge related to service operations management and ecosystems theory, we uncover several interesting patterns related to the formation, functioning, and feedback exchanges. First, the formation exchanges depend on the value creation goal of the service triad. Second, the service buyer engages in operational coordination, despite delegating the delivery of services to the supplier. Third, feedback exchanges allow the service triad to monitor service performance for further improvement and innovation. Our qualitative inquiry focusing on the visualization and codification of members’ participation in exchanges advances our collective understanding of service triads beyond the dominant focus on structure and governance.
Victorino, L.; Field, J. M.; Buell, R. W.; Dixon, M. J.; Meyer Goldstein, S.; Menor, L. J.; Pullman, M. E.; Roth, A. V.; Secchi, E.; Zhang, J. J., et al., 2018, "Service operations: what have we learned?", Journal of Service Management, January 29(1): 39 - 54.
Field, J. M.; Victorino, L.; Buell, R. W.; Dixon, M. J.; Meyer Goldstein, S.; Menor, L. J.; Pullman, M. E.; Roth, A. V.; Secchi, E.; Zhang, J. J., et al., 2018, "Service operations: what’s next?", Journal of Service Management, January 29(1): 55 - 97.
Abstract: Our study investigates the adoption of the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) as a strategic planning system. We empirically examine the firm-level factorsbusiness-level strategy, firm size, environmental uncertainty, investment in intangible assets, and prior performance that are posited to differentiate BSC adopters from nonadopters. Drawing on a sample of Canadian firms and utilizing both survey and archival data, we find that BSC adopters (a) are more likely to follow a Prospector or Analyzer business strategy, (b) are significantly larger, (c) exhibit significantly higher environmental uncertainty than nonadopters, and (d) have weaker prior performance.
Abstract: This study proposes an e-service resource bundle (E-SRB) as an antecedent of e-channel success in small retail service providers. The E-SRB indicates a collection of three resources: e-market acuity, e-IT competence, and e-service agility. Given the interdependence of these three resources in delivering quality e-services, we hypothesize about their complementarity and its positive effect on performance. The results of our structural equation modeling using survey data show support for the proposed hypotheses, demonstrating that the E-SRB positively influences e-channel performance. The performance impact is not limited to the perceived financial performance but extends to self-reported dollar-based sales and profits. These results have theoretical implications when it comes to linking e-service quality to financial performance. They also carry managerial implications for small-scale e-retailing, where limited resources can seriously impede the full use of the e-channel. One of these implications concerns what resources are necessary and how to allocate them in order to improve an e-service system. In the end, this study suggests that managers should understand the interrelationships that might exist among resources that collectively influence performance.
Abstract: This paper considers perspectives of service that define what has been called service logic. We review two contemporary service logics and compare them in terms of strategic and managerial insights. The first is the Service-Dominant Logic of Marketing, which provides a prescriptively interesting 'theory of the firm,' but not a descriptively pragmatic or informative 'theory of strategy.' In other words, it suggests why organizations exist without meaningfully directing managerial decisions and actions pertaining to the provision of service outcomes. It also absorbs all economic activity into the realm of 'service,' thus reducing or eliminating the ability to distinguish managerial insights along a servicenon-service dimension. The second is the Unified Service Theory, which explicitly discriminates between service and non-service activities, and prescribes managerial approaches that are unique to each. We introduce a strategic application that we call Process DNA, which posits that firms' value realization efforts are composed of sequences of processes. Some processes (service processes) involve interaction between firms and customers, and other processes (non-service processes) are decoupled. Firms can gain strategic advantage by altering the arrangement of interactive and decoupled processes within a process sequence.
Abstract: The advent of electronic-based service (e-service) transactions resulted in numerous operational challenges for service providers. Extending previous service management insights, we offer a provider-based framework identifying four overarching types of online interactions useful for advancing understanding on the design and delivery of quality e-service encounters. Our framework allows for examination of the amount of service intervention, the degree of user participation, and the type of user connection underlying online interactions for both Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 applications and platforms. We discuss how the quality of each e-service encounter type-informational, self-directive, intervenient and intensive-requires, from a systems quality and operational standpoint, the management of three elements (i.e., target market, concept, and delivery system) underlying the firm's e-service operations strategy. Finally, we propose promising areas in e-service encounter quality research where further investigation of design and delivery issues is urgently needed. One immediate implication stemming from our framework is that there is likely no single best strategy or approach to designing and delivering effective (i.e., quality) online moments of truth. What is required is the apt configuration of strategic e-service elements underlying each distinct e-service encounter type vis-à-vis critical e-service system quality dimensions (e.g., manageability, reliability, usability, etc.).
Abstract: What can service firms do to improve their ability to offer new services? In this paper we argue that new service development (NSD) success results from building a competence in the management of service development resources and routines. We conceptualize NSD competence as a multidimensional, second-order latent construct that is represented by a system of four interrelated and complementary dimensions: (1) formalized NSD processes, (2) market acuity, (3) NSD strategy and (4) information technology use and experience. We hypothesize that the development of NSD competence is related to improved NSD performance. Using structural equations modeling, we analyze survey data from 166 retail banks and report three key empirical findings. First, we show that the four hypothesized dimensions of NSD competence are statistically significant. Second, contrary to conventional wisdom in new product development, we find that formalized processes play a lesser role in the success of NSD compared to the other three dimensions. Market acuity - which captures the firm's ability to see the competitive environment clearly and to anticipate and respond to customers' evolving needs and wants - was the most important indicator of NSD competence. Finally, we demonstrate the positive effect of NSD competence on NSD performance and show that NSD competence is also significantly related to business-level performance. Together, our empirical results suggest that complementary benefits arise from the adoption of a more holistic approach to the management of NSD at the program level.
Abstract: Managers have long been challenged by an abundance of internal and external demands and uncertainties in their operating environments. Anecdotal evidence and a growing number of research studies have advocated process flexibility and product innovation as organization-level operating capabilities critical for responding to such demands and uncertainties and have highlighted the need for more efficient and effective management of the firm's knowledge-based resources. Leveraging arguments from the resource-based and knowledge-based views of the firm, we introduce a second-order latent construct called operational intellectual capital, which represents the organization's operating know-how embedded in a system of complementary (i.e., covarying) knowledge-based resources. We argue that operational intellectual capital influences organization-level operating capabilities such as process flexibility and product innovation, which in turn influence business performance. We empirically examine these relationships using structural equation modeling on a cross-section of U.S. manufacturing survey data. Statistical results from the estimation of a coalignment model and comparisons with several other models support our operational intellectual capacity conceptualization, and its impact on operating capabilities and business performance, respectively. Our research thus suggests the importance of possessing and leveraging a system of complementary knowledge-based operating resources and addresses the need for the reformulation of operations strategy theory in terms of the emergent knowledge-based view of the firm.
Abstract: Advancing theory and understanding of process management issues continues to be a central concern for operations management (OM) research and practice. While an insightful body of knowledge - based primarily on studies at the process-level - exists on the management of capacity and inventory, the dynamism characterizing most operating and competitive systems poses an ongoing challenge for managers having to mitigate the impact of variability across different levels of operating systems (e.g., production processes, facilities, and supply chains). This paper builds on a conceptual framework, derived from queuing theory and termed the "process management triangle," to explore the extent to which fundamental trade-offs between capacity utilization, variability and inventory (CVI) generalize to complex operations and business systems. To do so, empirical analyses utilizing comparatively unique data for the study of these process management issues - and collected from two distinct, vastly different levels of analysis - are presented. First, a simulation-based facility-level analysis using teaching case study data is presented. Second, an industry-level analysis employing archival economic data spanning three multi-year periods is considered. Collectively, these empirical analyses provide exploratory support for the generalization and extension of analytical insights on CVI trade-offs to both complex operations and business systems, although with decreasing explanatory power. The implications of these studies for furthering process management theory and understanding are framed around additional research propositions intended to guide future investigation of CVI trade-offs.
Abstract: New service development (NSD) has emerged as an important area of research in service operations management. However, NSD empirical investigations have been hindered by the lack of psychometrically sound measurement items and scales. This paper reports a two-stage approach for the development and validation of new multi-item measurement scales reflecting a multidimensional construct called NSD competence. NSD competence reflects an organization's expertise in deploying resources and routines, usually in combination, to achieve a desired new service outcome. This competence is operationalized as a multidimensional construct reflected by five complementary dimensions: NSD process focus, market acuity, NSD strategy, NSD culture, and information technology experience. In the first stage of measure development, we analyze judgment-based, nominal data collected through an iterative item-sorting process to assess the tentative reliability and validity of the proposed measurement items. Our results demonstrate that a reduced set of measurement items have reasonable psychometric properties and therefore are useful inputs for multi-item measurement scale development. In the second stage of measurement development, we conduct a confirmatory factor analysis of the five NSD dimensions using survey data collected from a sample of retail bank key informants and confirm the unidimensionality, reliability, and validity of the proposed five multi-item scales. The NSD competence scales developed in this research may be used to advance scholarly understanding and theory in NSD. Further, these NSD scales may provide a useful diagnostic and benchmarking tool for managers seeking to assess andor improve their firm's service innovation expertise.
Abstract: This paper offers insights regarding an agenda for service operations management (SOM) research. First, we motivate the need for an SOM research agenda. Second, we offer a research framework that paints a broad-based picture of key architectural elements in the SOM research landscape. The framework builds upon prior and emerging research for designing, delivering and evaluating services. Third, in order to stimulate future research in SOM, we use this framework to home in on five understudied and emerging research themes that underpin our proposed SOM research agenda.
Abstract: The management of new service development (NSD) has become an important competitive concern in many service industries. However, NSD remains among the least studied and understood topics in the service management literature. As a result, our current understanding of the critical resources and activities to develop new services is inadequate given NSD's importance as a service competitiveness driver. Until recently, the generally accepted principle behind NSD was that 'new services happen' rather than occurring through formal development processes. Recent efforts to address this debate have been inconclusive, thus additional research is needed to validate or discredit the belief that new services happen as a result of intuition, flair, and luck. Relying upon the general distinctions between research exploitation and exploration, this paper describes areas in NSD research that deserve further leveraging and refinement (i.e., exploitation) and identifies areas requiring discovery or new study (i.e., exploration). We discuss the critical substantive and research design issues facing NSD scholars such as defining new services, choice in focusing on the NSD process or performance (or both), and specification of unit of analysis. We also examine what can be exploited from the study of new product development to further understanding of NSD. Finally, we explore one important area for future NSD research exploration: the impact of the Internet on the design and development of services. We offer research opportunities and challenges in the study of NSD throughout the paper.
Abstract: This research demonstrates that operations agility-defined as the ability to excel simultaneously on operations capabilities of quality, delivery, flexibility and cost in a coordinated fashion-is a viable option for retail banks encountering increasing environmental change. The question of whether there is empirical evidence that services, specifically retail banks, display the characteristics of agility like their manufacturing counterparts is open to debate. Conventional wisdom in operations management suggests that most successful services trade off one capability for another. Drawing from the resource-based view of the firm, combinative capabilities view, and the cybernetics work of Ashby, theoretical arguments suggest the contrary. The agility paradigm is viable in environments calling for a mix of strategic responses. Applying cluster analytic techniques to a sample of retail banks, using capabilities as taxons, we identify four strategic service groups: agile, traditionalists, niche, and straddlers. Our empirical results provide thematic explanations consistent with theory that account for how the agile strategic group offers a unique configuration of service concept, resource competencies, strategic choices and business orientation. Profiles of the operations strategies of each strategic service group suggest that each group has found a fit between what certain segments of the market may want and what they have to offer. In particular, we found that the agile group exhibited greater resource competencies than its counterparts, requiring greater investments in infrastructure and technology. Consistent with theory, agile banks performed better over time on an absolute measure of return on assets.
