The Smith School's faculty research interests encompass a broad, dynamic mix of functional and netcentric economy issues. The Smith School has numerous research projects ongoing, and Research@Smith is the medium to keep you informed about many of these projects.

Research@Smith, Spring 2005

IN THIS ISSUE

Featured Stories:

Transportation
Market-driven mechanisms like auctions may be a more effective way to allocate airport slots than administrative processes.
RESEARCH BY Michael Ball

Supply Chain Management
An integrated model for scheduling production and distribution can result in cost savings and improved customer service for companies driven by direct orders.
RESEARCH BY Zhi-long Chen

Strategic Games
The Distributor Game uses web-enabled supports training and learning for today’s supply chains.
RESEARCH BY Thomas Corsi and Sandor Boyson

►New Center Opens at Smith
►Faculty Kudos
►Conferences and Symposia

►Download Spring 2005 Research@Smith (PDF)

New Center Opens at Smith

The Robert H. Smith School of Business has established the Center for Health Information and Decision Systems (CHIDS), a research and development focusing on the use of advanced information technologies in the health care system’s business processes and management systems.

CHIDS is a collaborative effort drawing on the expertise of the Decision and Information Technologies (D&IT) department at the Smith School, the University of Maryland Medical Center, University Hospital, and other resources in the University of Maryland network. CHIDS will work to improve the delivery of health care with researched solutions that impact safety, quality, access, efficiency, and return on investment.

“The potential savings and other benefits of fully moving the health care industry into the digital age are substantial but so are the challenges,” said Howard Frank, dean of the Robert H. Smith School of Business. “The Smith School’s Center for Health Information and Decision Systems comes at a critical time and answers significant gaps in current health information technology education and research.”

The primary purpose of CHIDS is to encourage and sponsor research related to health care IT. The center will also:

• Offering cutting edge education and opportunities for Smith School students to solve real-world problems related to the development, implementation or use of technology and analytical tools in a health care setting;
• Hosting industry meetings, seminars and forums to encourage knowledge exchange on the most important issues facing the industry with the recent adoption of IT into business processes;
• Disseminating knowledge and best practices through white papers, journals and publications.

“Health care comprises 14 percent of GDP in the United States today and is multi-billion dollar industry,” said Ritu Agarwal, director of the center, professor and Dean's Chair of Information Systems at the Robert H. Smith School of Business. “Information technology has transformed other information-intensive industries such as financial services and retailing, but health care is lagging. There is tremendous potential for improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the health care delivery process through the application of advanced information and decision technologies. CHIDS has been established to fill this need. The center is currently working on research related to the adoption of electronic medical records, privacy issues and the transformation of physician work practices through mobile technologies.”

Improving health care technology has been a national priority for the Bush Administration, which supports the formation of a national electronic health record system within the next 10 years that would assist in tracking and sharing information on every U.S. citizen. According to the federal Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, an agency created by President Bush in April 2004, such a system would produce efficiencies saving $140 billion a year.

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Faculty Kudos

G. Anandalingam, Ralph J. Tyser Professor of Management Science, chair of the decision and information technologies department and co-director of the Center for Electronic Markets and Enterprises, and Raghu Raghavan, assistant professor of management science, co-edited a special issue of the Journal of Management Science focused on electronic markets in March 2005.

Sandor Boyson, research professor and co-director of the Supply Chain Management Center, was the keynote speaker at both the Greater China Logistics Forum in Tapei in December 2004 and the Annual National E-Logistics Forum sponsored by the Finnish Government.

Bruce Golden, France-Merrick Professor of Management Science, was elected to the INFORMS Fellows Selection Committee for a term of three years.

Lawrence A. Gordon, Ernst & Young Alumni Professor of Managerial Accounting, and Martin Loeb, Deloitte & Touche LLP Faculty Fellow and professor of accounting and information assurance, were invited to be guest editors of a special issue of Information Systems Frontiers on the topic Economic Aspects of Information Security.

A paper coauthored by Anne Marie Knott, visiting assistant professor of management and organization, and Wharton PhD student Brian Wu, “Entrepreneurial Risk and Market Entry,” received the annual Best Doctoral Paper award from the Small Business Administration's Office of Advocacy. The paper describes entrepreneurs as inherently overconfident, which helps cancel out their sensitivity to risk.

Smith’s marketing department won best article awards from the Journal of Marketing for two separate articles: Roland Rust, David Bruce Smith Chair in Marketing, chair of the marketing department and director of the Center for Excellence in Service, won the MSI/Paul Root Award for the article with the greatest impact on marketing practice, for his article, “Return on Marketing: Using Customer Equity to Focus Marketing Strategy,” co-authored by Katherine Lemon & Valarie Zeithaml. Steve Vargo, visiting professor of marketing, won the Harold H. Maynard Award for the article with the greatest impact on marketing theory; his paper is entitled “Evolving to a New Dominant Logic for Marketing,” and co-authored with Robert Lusch.

Smith’s marketing department was awarded the 2006 AMA Doctoral Consortium. Gabriel Biehal, associate professor of marketing, Brian Ratchford, Pepsico Chair in Consumer Research and Roland Rust will co-chair the Consortium.

Roland Rust was named the 2005 winner of the Distinguished Marketing Scholar Award by the Society for Marketing Advances. The award, honoring “exceptional scholarly achievements,” will be presented at the annual SMA conference in November.

Raghu Raghavan, assistant professor of management science, has been appointed associate editor for the INFORMS Journal on Computing.

Lemma Senbet, William E. Mayer Chair in Finance and chair of the finance department, was a speaker at the annual conference of the World Bank in Dakar, Senegal, January 2005. This is the first time that such a meeting was held in Africa. He also participated in the ensuing workshop involving World Bank officials and African economic policy makers.

M. Susan Taylor, Dean’s Professor of Human Resources, was appointed an International Visiting Research Fellow by AIM, England's Advanced Institute of Management Research, for 2005-2007.

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Conferences and Symposia

Statistical Challenges in E-Commerce
May 22-23, 2005
This interdisciplinary symposium will feature workshops which identify problems and research questions related to empirical research in electronic commerce by bringing together researchers from information systems, statistics and related fields to help better understand how these various lines of work connect to one another and how, together, they can contribute to the modernization and enhancement of empirical research methods for electronic commerce and our digital society at large.

Sponsored by the Center for Electric Markets and Enterprises and the University of Maryland Statistics Consortium.

Financial Information Systems and Cybersecurity: A Public Policy Perspective
May 26, 2005

Information security is a subject of increasing interest in a world where business is driven by data. The second annual Forum on Financial Information Systems and Cybersecurity will feature discussions by academians and subject matter experts from around the world.

Co-Coordinators: Lawrence A. Gordon, and Martin P. Loeb, University of Maryland, Robert H. Smith School of Business, and William Lucyshyn, University of Maryland, School of Public Policy

Imagining Tomorrow’s Internet: The Convergence of Digital and Social Networks
Smith’s Fifth Annual Netcentricity Conference
April 29, 2005

Smith’s Fifth Annual Netcentricity Conference featured thought leaders and cutting-edge research at the intersection of digital and social networks. Speakers included executives and researchers from Amazon.com, the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy at Columbia University, the Weatherhead School of Management at Case University, Health A to Z, and Washington Technology Partners, among others. The program featured panels on virtual communities in health care, open source networks, and global coordination of digital and social networks.

Sponsored by the Center for Electronic Markets and Enterprises, Robert H. Smith School of Business.

See highlights from the 2005 Netcentricity Conference on our Web site at www.rhsmith.umd.edu/netconference. 

Entrepreneurship Within and Across Borders
April 22-23, 2005

The first Smith Entrepreneurship Research Conference, "Entrepreneurship Within and Across Borders," brought together some of the world's leading scholars in the field of entrepreneurship to share their research, ideas and thoughts on topics such as entrepreneurial cognitions and behavior, learning and entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial ecosystems, new venture business models and entrepreneurship in a global context.

Sponsored by the United States Department of Education and the Robert H. Smith School of Business.

Conference co-chairs: Anil Gupta and Violina Rindova, University of Maryland, Robert H. Smith School of Business.

See highlights from this conference, including streaming video and presentations, at www.rhsmith.umd.edu/entrepconf.

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DEAN
Howard Frank

DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH
Michael Ball

EDITOR
Rebecca Winner

CONTRIBUTOR
Kenneth Ng, Smith MBA Candidate 2006

We’d like to put Research@Smith directly into the hands of those who are interested in learning about the latest research conducted by Smith School faculty. To request a copy of this publication contact Rebecca Winner via e-mail, editor@rhsmith.umd.edu, or phone, (301) 405-9465.

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