The human side of supply chain decisions

Supply chain models usually assume that buyers and suppliers are rational: they share forecasts when it pays, accept contracts that maximize expected profit, and ignore anything irrelevant. Years of operating experience — negotiating with suppliers across Europe, Asia, and the Americas — taught me that real decisions are made by people, and people are not purely rational.

That observation became the foundation of my research in behavioral operations management and behavioral economics.

The questions I study

• Do looks matter in supply chain contracting? (Business Economics, 2023)
• Do attractive people get a better deal? (International Journal of the Economics of Business, 2024)
• Does looking trustworthy facilitate forecast sharing in a supply chain? (Review of Behavioral Economics, 2026)

Each study uses controlled experiments to isolate whether cues that should be irrelevant to the economics of a deal — such as appearance or perceived trustworthiness — influence how people behave as buyers and suppliers.

Why it matters for practitioners

Forecast sharing, contract negotiation, and supplier selection are exactly the moments where trust is built or lost. Understanding the behavioral side helps organizations design processes — structured information sharing, clear criteria, standardized risk ratings — that keep decisions anchored to the evidence.

The full list of publications is on the Research page, with links to Google Scholar.