Contingency research in operations management practices

Abstract As operations management (OM) best practices have become mature, research on practices has begun to shift its interest from the justification of the value of those practices to the understanding of the contextual conditions under which they are effective—OM practice contingency research (OM PCR). This article sets out to examine and critique the current state of OM PCR. We review OM PCR studies through the lens of the major theoretical view on contingencies, contingency theory, along a number of relevant dimensions: contingency variables, performance variables, measurement, research design and employed form of fit. In this process, we put forward a number of tasks that need to be accomplished in order…