A gestão de operações na administração a partir de três perspectivas: pesquisa, ensino e prática empresarial

Abstract

This thesis analyzes the consonance of the importance assigned to the Operation Management themes by those involved in its research, teaching and practice. In order to accomplish that, the themes were previously mapped based on the offer of editorial space by journals and conferences and the mapping was used as a reference for all other activities. The researchers’ perspective was raised based on the themes of the papers they published in academic journals during the period from 2001 to 2010. The teaching perspective was captured from the analysis of the syllabuses of 47 business school courses on Operations Management in Brazil. The practitioners’ perspective was obtained by means of interviews with plant managers of four car assembly companies and the analysis of documents that are used as guidelines to their production systems. After that, a survey was carried out to gather information on the importance given to each of the Operations Management themes by professionals of the three categories: (1) active researchers in the field, (2) professors teaching Operations Management to Business students at undergraduate level, and (3) practitioners in charge of industrial processes in manufacturing plants. The participants were invited to answer a questionnaire with Likert scale questions, about the importance of each mapped Operations Management theme. The analysis based on the survey showed that there was no significant variation on the respondents understanding of the importance of the themes, regardless of their activity (research, teaching or practice oriented). However, in spite of that, dissonance is perceived with respect to the emphasis they give to such themes in their daily activities. Researchers prioritize themes in their studies that are, at least to some extent, different to those emphasized in teaching and those that are more often applied in the manufacturing plant routine. Contrasting what is researched, what is taught and what is done in the field, one notices that, among the twenty most valued themes, only three are common to professionals of the three categories (representing 15% of the Operations Management themes). With respect to the differences, four of the twenty main themes are not shared with any of the other categories (20% of the cases). Another interesting finding was that research and teaching pay a more homogeneous attention to all Operations Management themes, while practitioners focus their attention on fewer themes: in their case, 22.2% of the themes consume 75.5% of their attention in their daily routine.