Publications

Purchase

21 Aug 2019
Working Paper Summaries

Improving Customer Compatibility with Operational Transparency

Keywords: by Ryan W. Buell and MoonSoo Choi; Banking

05 Mar 2019
News

Make Customers Happier with Operational Transparency

March–April 2019
Article

Operational Transparency: Make Your Processes Visible to Customers and Your Customers Visible to Employees

By: Ryan W. Buell

Conventional wisdom holds that the more contact an operation has with its customers, the less efficiently it will run. But when customers are partitioned away from the operation, they are less likely to fully understand and appreciate the work going on behind the... View Details

Keywords: Operational Transparency; Customers; Services; Operations; Customer Focus and Relationships; Employees; Customer Satisfaction; Behavior; Service Industry

June 2017
Article

Creating Reciprocal Value Through Operational Transparency

By: Ryan W. Buell, Tami Kim and Chia-Jung Tsay

We investigate whether organizations can create value by introducing visual transparency between consumers and producers. Although operational transparency has been shown to improve consumer perceptions of service value, existing theory posits that increased contact... View Details

Keywords: Operational Transparency; Service Management; Production Management; Organizational Performance; Behavioral Operations; Service Operations; Service Delivery; Consumer Behavior; Labor; Organizational Design; Operations; Service Industry; United States; Kenya

20 Feb 2019
News

Operational Transparency

February 2021
Article

How Transparency into Internal and External Responsibility Initiatives Influences Consumer Choice

By: Ryan W. Buell and Basak Kalkanci

Amid growing calls for transparency and social and environmental responsibility, companies are employing different strategies to improve consumer perceptions of their brands. Some pursue internal initiatives that reduce their negative social or environmental impacts... View Details

Keywords: Sustainable Operations; Corporate Social Responsibility; Operational Transparency; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Operations; Environmental Sustainability; Consumer Behavior; Perception

SSRN

July–August 2021
Article

Surfacing the Submerged State: Operational Transparency Increases Trust in and Engagement with Government

By: Ryan W. Buell, Ethan Porter and Michael I. Norton

Problem definition: As trust in government reaches historic lows, frustration with government performance approaches record highs. Academic/practical relevance: We propose that in co-productive settings like government services, peoples’ trust and... View Details

Keywords: Government Services; Behavioral Operations; Operational Transparency; Government Administration; Service Operations; Programs; Perception; Attitudes; Behavior; Trust

30 Jan 2020
Research & Ideas

The Upside of Highlighting a Product's Downsides

When booking an international flight, the choice often comes down to “expensive but direct” or “cheap with connections.” But what if an airline warned customers that the direct flight was frequently delayed? Would customers appreciate knowing that they might spend more... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost

01 Jul 2014
Working Paper Summaries

Creating Reciprocal Value Through Operational Transparency

Keywords: by Ryan W. Buell, Tami Kim & Chia-Jung Tsay

Transforming Customer Engagement

Against a backdrop of intensifying competition, rising labor costs, and ascending customer expectations, companies are actively seeking ways to do more with less – for example, compelling customers to take on new roles in the value creation process. And, when... View Details

Research Summary

Overview

By: Ryan W. Buell

From creating flight itineraries online, to interacting with tellers to complete complex banking transactions, to engaging with the government to address civic problems, customers are playing an increasingly vital role in the performance of operations in a broadening... View Details

Article

Cooks Make Tastier Food When They Can See Their Customers

By: Ryan W. Buell, Tami Kim and Chia-Jung Tsay

While existing theory suggests that increased contact between customers and employees diminishes efficiency, recent research demonstrates that when employees can see their customers, the beneficiaries of their efforts, the quality and efficiency of the service they... View Details

Keywords: Operational Transparency; Service Delivery; Service Operations; Service Management; Service Industry

31 Mar 2015
News

Let's Be Real: Why Transparency in Business Should Be the Norm

2022
Article

OpenXAI: Towards a Transparent Evaluation of Model Explanations

By: Chirag Agarwal, Satyapriya Krishna, Eshika Saxena, Martin Pawelczyk, Nari Johnson, Isha Puri, Marinka Zitnik and Himabindu Lakkaraju

While several types of post hoc explanation methods have been proposed in recent literature, there is very little work on systematically benchmarking these methods. Here, we introduce OpenXAI, a comprehensive and extensible opensource framework for evaluating and... View Details

Keywords: Measurement and Metrics; Analytics and Data Science

September 2011
Article

The Labor Illusion: How Operational Transparency Increases Perceived Value

By: Ryan W. Buell and Michael I. Norton

A ubiquitous feature of even the fastest self-service technology transactions is the wait. Conventional wisdom and operations theory suggests that the longer people wait, the less satisfied they become; we demonstrate that due to what we term the labor illusion, when... View Details

Keywords: Internet and the Web; Perception; Valuation; Service Delivery; Consumer Behavior; Performance Effectiveness; Customer Satisfaction; Service Industry

2019
Working Paper

Relative Performance Transparency: Effects on Sustainable Choices

By: Ryan W. Buell, Shwetha Mariadassou and Yanchong Zheng

We study how transparency into the levels and changes of relative sustainability performance affects consumer choices. Our work considers two forms of transparency: process transparency, in which customers receive information about the company's sustainability... View Details

Keywords: Relative Performance Tranparency; Process Transparency; Customer Transparency; Levels; Changes; Reflectiveness; Self-serving Attribution Biases; Sustainability; Consumer Choice

SSRN

November 29, 2023
Article

To Earn Trust, Climate Alliances Need to Improve Transparency

By: Peter Tufano, Chris Thomas, Knut Haanaes, Matteo Gasparini, Robert Eyres and Christopher Chapman

Businesses are increasingly joining together as part of climate alliances to accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels. But these alliances raise antitrust issues: When competitors collaborate, it can come at the expense of customers or workers. To mitigate... View Details

Keywords: Climate Change; Partners and Partnerships; Corporate Disclosure; Energy Sources

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Article

Why Am I Seeing This Ad? The Effect of Ad Transparency on Ad Effectiveness

By: Tami Kim, Kate Barasz and Leslie K. John

Given the increasingly specific ways marketers can target ads, many consumers and regulators are demanding ad transparency: disclosure of how consumers’ personal information was used to generate ads. We investigate how and why ad transparency impacts ad effectiveness.... View Details

Keywords: Digital Marketing; Customization and Personalization; Information; Trust; Performance Effectiveness