Posted on April 1, 2021 by Wendy Frost
Kefeng Xu, professor of management science and statistics at the UTSA Carlos Alvarez College of Business, received the best problem-driven analytical research paper award from the Decision Sciences Institute.
The paper, “Scheduled Delay or Schedule Creep: Service Failures and Consumer Loss Aversion in the Airline Industry,” studied the strategic implications of service failure for airline service providers.
“The airline industry has always been a favorite topic of mine,” said Xu, who has taught at UTSA since 1997. “It was the subject of one of my first papers as a Ph.D. student.”
Cutting across several disciplines, the work of Xu and his coauthors studies service failure from the perspective of both consumers as well as within industry. The modeling includes elements of game theory, behavioral economics, consumer behavior as well as operations theory.
“The reason that this paper is so unique is that we have made a theoretical contribution to service management literature as well as a practical contribution to the airline industry,” he said. “We’ve studied this industry for a long time, and we understand the nature of what the managers are concerned about. Our research can provide guidance to the airline industry.”
Xu’s areas of expertise and research interests include operations, logistics and information management strategy, global and domestic supply chain, inventory and supply management and transportation policy.
While he awaits the publication of this paper, Kefeng Xu is currently studying the implications of supply chain risks and sustainability.
— Wendy Frost
