Roger G. Schroeder
Dr. Roger G. Schroeder is the Frank Donaldson Chair in Operations Management at the
University of Minnesota, Carlson School of Management and Fellow of the Production and
Operations Management Society.
Professor Schroeder is one of the founding scholars of empirical research in Operations
Management. Beginning in the 1970’s he was one of the very first OM scholars to embrace the
empirical research tradition and to this day has one of the most active and productive research
programs. Professor Schroeder has made seminal contributions towards defining, shaping, and
advancing quality management, operations strategy and high performance manufacturing.
Professor Schroeder’s interest in High Performance Manufacturing dates back to 1990 when he
and Professor Barbara Flynn (Indiana University) started a study on the practices and
contingencies that led to one factory outperforming another. This resulted in a large international
study of manufacturing practices across different countries and cultures. The study is currently
in its fourth round of data collection and data has been collected from 280 factories in 10
different countries. A series of more than thirty papers, many of which have appeared in top
journals in the field, and a book have resulted from this study. Several projects are currently in
progress to test theories and hypotheses from this data.
For many years, Professor Schroeder has been publishing in the operations strategy area,
specifically on topics such as the resource-based view applied to operations, strategic
performance in operations and the contingencies for operations strategy to be effective. And, in
recent years, he has been studying Six Sigma and its relationship to knowledge management.
This has resulted in papers on definitions of Six Sigma, goal setting, and the relationship of Six
Sigma to knowledge creation, diffusion and retention. Professor Schroeder has also been
researching TQM and continuous improvement applied to High Schools in the U.S. together
with researchers from the College of Education. This has led him to look into organizational
culture as it impedes or facilitates the implementation of TQM practices.
Professor Schroeder’s publication count in major research journals and proceedings
exceeds 150. His papers have appeared in top journals such as Management Science,
Academy of Management Journal, Strategic Management Journal, Academy of
Management Review, Production and Operations Management, Journal of Operations
Management, and Decision Sciences. The topics addressed in these papers include: the
impact of quality management practices on performance and competitive advantage,
manufacturing strategy, new product introduction, and high performance manufacturing.
Most recently, the Handbook of Multi-Item Scales for Research in Operations Management
(2007, Sage Publications) that Professor Schroeder co-authored has become a seminal
contribution towards advancing the Operations Management field.
The recent recognitions Professor Schroeder has received attest to his research
accomplishments and impact. The 2004 ISI listing recognizes Professor Schroeder as the top
cited scholar in operations management in the world and among the top 50 most cited scholars
across all disciplines of Business and Economics over the past 10 years. His research
publications have achieved a total of 7500 citations by other researchers. In 2004, Professor
Schroeder was also honored by the Academy of Management (Operations Management
Division) with the Lifetime Scholarship Achievement Award. In 2003, he was inducted as a
Fellow of the Decision Sciences Institute. In 2005, Professor Schroeder was awarded Dean’s
prize for best researcher at the Carlson School of Management in recognition of his research
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contributions. In 2007 he was named as a Fellow of the Production and Operations
Management Society.
Finally, an important indicator of the significance of Professor
Schroeder’s research program is the generous funding he has received from the National
Science Foundation (NSF). Since 1992, Professor Schroeder and his research collaborators
have successfully obtained approximately $2,000,000 in seven different NSF competitive
grants.
Professor Schroeder’s pedagogical contributions to the OM field are exemplary. Nine editions of
his Operations Management textbook have been published since its first edition was published
in 1981. Leading business schools such as Kellogg (Northwestern University), Stern (New York
University) and Darden (University of Virginia) have adopted this textbook in their operations
management curriculum. The book has now been translated into other foreign languages (e.g.,
Chinese and Spanish) and has been adopted internationally. Professor Schroeder has
successfully and continually taught in the Carlson School’s MBA Program, Vienna Executive
MBA Program and its PhD program. In the MBA Program, he has taught in the Full-Time Core,
as well as the Full- and Part-Time electives, concentrating on Operations Strategy and
International Operations. Professor Schroeder has chaired and served on countless dissertation
committees. In 2005, he was inducted into the University of Minnesota Academy of
Distinguished Teachers, a rare honor for a University of Minnesota faculty member.
Professor Schroeder has been a visionary institutional leader at the Carlson School. He was the
Founding Chair of the Operations Management Science Department at the Carlson School and
served in that capacity from 1988 to 1993. It is his vision to focus the Department, as a whole, to
conduct problem-driven empirical research that has helped the Department to earn the world
wide reputation of being among the very best in OM empirical research.
Professor Schroeder’s institutional leadership is also evidenced in the conception, creation,
development and growth of the Joseph Juran Center for Leadership in Quality, an
interdisciplinary University-wide center, along with Jim Buckman. From 1993 to 2008, Professor
Schroeder served as the Center’s Academic Co-Director.
The Juran Center occupies a unique place as a repository for developments in the field of
leadership in quality and a generator of new research, new ideas, and more scholars. The
Center has developed a world wide reputation as being a disciplined, rigorous champion of
development in the field of quality management. The center serves as a resource to leaders,
scholars, and students of quality management. Through its fellowship program for graduate
students, its Summits for corporate and academic leaders, its educational offerings, and its body
of knowledge repository of research and discovery, the Center is stewarding the evolution of Dr.
Juran’s vision for a Century of Quality.
The Production and Operations Management Society has been a beneficiary of Professor
Schroeder’s productive and vibrant research program and intellectual leadership. Professor
Schroeder and his associates have published a series of papers in Production and Operations
Management. And Professor Schroeder has served as the Guest Editor for two special issues of
the journal – one on “Quality Management” and the other on “Theory in Operations
Management.”
Professor Schroeder has been recognized as one of discipline’s most accomplished researcher,
educator, mentor and institutional leader who truly has made a difference in advancing the
theory and practice of production and operations management.
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Twenty top publications (most citations and impact)
Books published
Schroeder, Goldstein and Rungtusanatham (2010). Operations Management: Contemporary
Concepts and Cases, 5th ed., McGraw-Hill.
Schroeder and Flynn (eds) (2001), High Performance Manufacturing: A Global Perspective,
Wiley.
Roth, Schroeder, Huang and Kristal, (2008), Handbook of Multi-item Scales for Research in
Operations Management, Sage.
Quality Management
Schroeder, Linderman, Liedtke and Choo. 2008. Six Sigma: Definition and underlying theory,”
Journal of Operations Management.
Linderman, Schroeder, Zaheer and Choo. 2006. Six Sigma: A goal-theoretic perspective.
Journal of Operations Management.
Schroeder, Linderman and Zhang. 2005. Evolution of Quality: First fifty issues of Production
and Operations Management. Production & Operations Management.
Detert, Schroeder and Mauriel. 2000. A framework for linking culture and improvement
initiatives in organizations. Academy of Management Review
Flynn, Schroeder and Sakakibara. 1995. The impact of quality management practices on
performance and competitive advantage, Decision Sciences.
Anderson, Rungtusanatham and Schroeder. 1994. A theory of quality management underlying
the Deming Management Method, Academy of Management Review.
Sitkin, Sutcliffe and Schroeder. 1994. Distinguishing control from learning in total quality
management: A contingency view. Academy of Management Review.
Benson, Saraph and Schroeder. 1991. The effects of organizational context on quality
management: An empirical investigation. Management Science.
Saraph, Benson and Schroeder. 1989. An instrument for measuring the critical factors of quality
management, Decision Sciences.
High Performance Manufacturing
Ahmad and Schroeder. 2003. The impact of human resource management practices on
operational performance. Journal of Operations Management.
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Flynn, Schroeder and Flynn. 1999. World Class Manufacturing: An investigation of Hayes and
Wheelwright’s foundation. Journal of Operations Management.
Sakakibara, Flynn, Schroeder and Morris. 1997. The impact of Just-in-time manufacturing and
its infrastructure on manufacturing performance. Management Science.
Flynn, Schroeder, Flynn, Sakakibara and Bates. 1997. World Class Manufacturing project:
Overview and selected results. Journal of Operations Management.
Flynn, Sakakibara and Schroeder. 1995. Relationship between JIT and TQM: Practices and
Performance. Academy of Management Journal.
Sakakibara, Flynn and Schroeder. 1993. A framework and measurement instrument for Just-intime manufacturing. Production & Operations Management
Operations Strategy
Ketokivi and Schroeder. 2004. Strategic, structural contingency and institutional explanations in
the adoption of innovative manufacturing practices. Journal of Operations Management
Schroeder, Bates and Juntilla. 2002. A resource-based view of manufacturing strategy and the
relationship to manufacturing performance. Strategic Management Journal.
Bates, Amundson and Schroeder and Morris. 1995. The crucial interrelationship between
manufacturing strategy and organizational culture. Management Science.
Anderson, Cleveland and Schroeder. 1989. Operations strategy: a literature review. Journal of
Operations Management.
Schroeder, Anderson and Cleveland. 1986. The content of manufacturing strategy: an empirical
study. Journal of Operations Management.