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In his dissertation Rowan Hoogervorst focused on improving both the scheduling and rescheduling of rolling stock, where he is specifically interested in further integrating these problems into the operational process of a railway operator. Railway transportation plays an important role in the Dutch mobility system. To make train travel both comfortable and affordable, it is essential for operators to efficiently use their train units. This means that these train units have to be scheduled such that a good balance between passenger service and operational costs is found. Moreover, efficient rescheduling of these train units is necessary to maintain a good service in case a disruption occurs in the railway system.

At the beginning of the digital age 30 years ago, Peter Vervest, Professor of Information Management and Networks, joined Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University (RSM) as a faculty member. To celebrate the professor’s career milestone and his retirement, RSM hosted a valedictory event to take a deeper look at the roles that universities should play in being digital leaders and how students can be equipped to learn with new technologies. The event, on 24 September, began with a debate and the official opening of a new facility for the university: the new Erasmus Data Collaboratory, before Professor Vervest’s farewell lecture Fast-Forward Digital: A new kind of university.

In her dissertation Sha Zhu presented three contributions to the problem of obsolescence of large spare parts inventories for capital goods. First, a new method based on extreme-value theory was developed to aid companies in forecasting the spare parts demand distribution. Next, the inventory control problem for on-condition maintenance and shutdown maintenance were analyzed. Finally, a model is established to model the spare parts ordering problem against the background of shutdown maintenance project planning.

In his dissertation 'Public Transport and Passengers: Optimization Models that Consider Travel Demand' Johann Hartleb presented integrated models to optimize public transport services while estimating the corresponding passenger choices. The first study compares different timetable evaluation functions for consistency and gives further motivation for the integration of passenger choice models into optimization models. In the next two studies, he presented novel optimization models with integrated demand estimation for the steps of timetabling and line planning, respectively. The resulting public transport services are designed for the passenger demand they generate. The second part of this thesis deals with new and more flexible forms of public transport: mobility on demand. In order to assess the consequences of large-scale on-demand services on cities and regions, travel demand models need to be extended to determine the service level of on-demand services. Both studies in this part present solution algorithms for a vehicle scheduling problem of on-demand services to estimate the required vehicle fleet size and distance traveled

A paper that provides strong theoretical and practical insights into the important phenomenon of supplier involvement in new product development has won the Best Empirical Paper Award from the Journal of Supply Chain Management. The award was announced at its annual awards session at the Academy of Management virtual meeting in August. Professor Finn Wynstra, Professor of Purchasing and Supply Management of Rotterdam School of Management Erasmus University (RSM) worked with Dr Robert Suurmond and Prof. Jan Dul on Unraveling the Dimensions of Supplier Involvement and their Effects on NPD Performance: A Meta-Analysis.

In his dissertation 'How firms cope with digital revolution' Mohammad Taghi Ramezan Zadeh presented three studies of the firms’ strategy and organization in developing and adopting digital technological innovations. In this dissertation, the boundary conditions of the current theories in the digital era were identified, and new theories were developed and tested. Consequently, recommendations were provided for practice. Avenues for future research were also suggested.

In her dissertation 'The Effect of Posted Prices on Sequential Auctions in B2B Multi-channel Markets' Huong May Truong addressed how different channels can be strategically combined and how one channel can influence the outcomes of another, especially in a B2B context. The studies exploit a large dataset of over 1 million flower lots from a unique system where an online posted price channel (so-called pre-sales) is incorporated into a B2B Dutch auction system sequentially. The first study focuses on the economic impact of pre-sales, exploring the outcomes for lots with and without pre-sales. The second study focuses on buyers’ strategic behaviors in the multi-mechanism system. The third study investigates price dynamics in sequential auctions. The pre-sales channel reveals additional information such as pre-sales price and quantity sold for bidders. It can affect the auction price and its dynamics, revenue, and competition via multiple mechanisms and lead to positive outcomes for sellers in the Dutch sequential auction system.

Ground-breaking research by Ale Smidts and Maarten Boksem of the Erasmus Centre for Neuroeconomics has been recognised with the Insight Scientist of the Year award from the Dutch centre of expertise for marketing professionals, MOA.

In his dissertation 'Hour of Judgment: On judgment, decision making, and problem solving under accountability', Aljaz Sluga reported the results of a series of behavioral experiments designed to shed light on some of the following questions: How should accountability be implemented to elicit optimal performance from individuals? Does scrutinizing the process the accountable individual is using tend to yield more accurate judgments and decisions than focusing strictly on the outcome? Does the answer depend on the nature of the decision environment? Does the answer hold in the domain of problems that call for insightful solutions? What are the cognitive and affective mechanisms that mediate the differences in performance between process accountability and outcome accountability?

In his dissertation ‘Moving Beyond the Why and What Question: How Corporations Achieve Sustainable Development’ Thijs Geradts explored the role of sustainable intrapreneurs, senior managers, and organization design in effectuating a corporate transition toward sustainability. Besides highlighting the important role sustainable intrapreneurs play for corporations to achieve sustainable development, we proposed that sustainable intrapreneurs distinctly advance innovation, alter resource allocation, and manage uncertainty when advancing entrepreneurial solutions to social and/or environmental problems compared to entrepreneurial actors in other contexts.