Modeling Collective Action in POM: The Strategy-Operations-People Framework (Revision 1 )

While many business situations relevant to Production and Operations Management (POM), e.g., supply chain coordination or sustainable operations, involve some form of collective action, managerial frameworks for collective action appear to be rarely applied to POM contexts. Valuable insights for effectively solving POM problems may thus be missed, reducing the implementation and effectiveness of proposed POM solutions. Conversely, these managerial frameworks typically lack the mathematical formalism that is characteristic of POM models, creating ambiguity around the defining scope of their elements. To bridge this gap, this paper develops a mathematical formalization of a framework for collective action proposed in the organizational behavior literature. It then illustrates its relevance to POM by mapping it to case studies in supply chain coordination and sustainable operations. The framework under consideration, which the authors call the Strategy-Operations-People (SOP) framework, is structured in three levels, each consisting, respectively, of three, two and one elements. First, the Strategy level induces and enforces solidarity among all team members by specifying common goals, shared values, and well-defined rules. Second, the Operations level organizes the decentralized execution of collective action in autonomous subgroups through the detailed specification of roles and processes. Third, the People level requires the individual commitment of all team members to the proposed collective action program, since a team’s performance rests on the individual contributions of its members. The framework thus addresses the common, subgroup, and individual dimensions of collective action. The SOP framework provides POM with a systemic approach to studying collective action. Mapping the framework to two problems in supply chain management and sustainable operations also illustrates the broad applicability of the framework, originally designed for teams within organizations, to guide collective action taking place across organizations. Its mathematical formalization brings operational clarity on the defining scope of its elements, and provides a check list for detecting potential blind spots affecting the effective implementation of proposed POM models.