ESSAYS ON CONTEMPORARY CHALLENGES IN OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT: SUSTAINABILITY AND WORKFORCE DIVERSITY

Shirin Shahsavand

This dissertation expands the traditional paradigm of operations management (OM)—often focused on firm-level efficiency and profitability—to investigate its broader societal impact. It explores how operational decisions, policies, and workforce composition can generate significant public value. The two essays herein examine critical, yet distinct, societal challenges through an operational lens: fostering environmental sustainability in retail and enhancing public health and safety through gender diversity in regulatory oversight. Together, they demonstrate that operational practices are not merely technical functions but are deeply embedded in societal outcomes. The first essay, ``Strategic Promotions and Discounts for Increasing Customer Engagement in Apparel Take-back Initiatives,'' addresses the environmental challenge of textile waste from the apparel industry. Confronting low consumer participation, this manuscript develops an analytical model that accounts for customer heterogeneity in environmental concern to jointly optimize promotion and discount incentives. The findings reveal that these two levers play distinct, complementary roles and appeal to different customer segments: promotions are most effective at activating sustainable customers (who value environmental concern), while discounts are more effective at motivating conventional customers (who are more price-sensitive). The model shows that consumer ``hassle'' is a primary determinant of success, and in high-hassle markets, it is often more profitable to invest in operational convenience (e.g., drop-off kiosks) than to overspend on incentives. Furthermore, the optimal strategy is contingent on market and operational factors: discounts are most effective for products with a low perceived value, and as back-end salvage value increases, it becomes economically optimal to offer stronger front-end incentives. The second essay, ``Female FDA Investigators and Medical Device Plant Inspections," examines the societal impact of gender diversity in a critical public health function: the regulatory oversight of medical device manufacturing. Using a dataset of 8,989 inspections from 2003 to 2019, this empirical study investigates whether inspector gender influences inspection outcomes and subsequent product quality. The study finds that female investigators are over 90\% more likely to assign the most serious violation, an ``Official Action Indicated'' (OAI), than their male counterparts. Critically, these female-assigned OAIs are linked to superior public health outcomes, reducing the hazard of a serious, quality-related adverse event at the plant by more than 70\%. A post-hoc analysis reveals this difference is partially explained by female investigators spending, on average, 20\% more time on inspections that result in an OAI, suggesting a more thorough inspection process.

ESSAYS ON CONTEMPORARY CHALLENGES IN OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT: SUSTAINABILITY AND WORKFORCE DIVERSITY

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