Anita Carson - Boston University Questrom

Dr. Anita L. Carson is the Larz Anderson Professor in Operations & Technology Management and department chair at the Questrom School of Business at Boston University. Prior to joining Boston University, Anita taught at Wharton, Harvard, and Brandeis Business Schools. She has bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research, and a doctorate in Business Administration. Before pursuing her doctorate, she worked for 5 years for General Mills and the Electric Boat division of General Dynamics. Her manufacturing experiences are therefore diverse: ranging from fruit-on-the-bottom yogurt to nuclear submarines.

She investigates how service process design impacts quality and efficiency. In particular, she has studied care delivery processes in hospitals. Her research finds that a lack of internal integration results in a culture of workarounds that wastes up to 10% of staff’s time. She leverages principles from operations management to help hospitals decrease workarounds and create an improvement-oriented culture. Her research has won numerous awards including a Best Dissertation award from AcademyHealth, a Sloan Industry Studies Fellowship, a best paper award from California Management Review, seven best paper proceedings awards from the Academy of Management, and outstanding abstract from AcademyHealth.

Professor Carson teaches operations management, service operations, quality improvement, healthcare operations, operations strategy and supply chain management at the undergraduate, MBA, executive, and doctorate levels. She has written case studies and conducted research on process improvement in collaboration with hospitals such as Kaiser Permanente, Cincinnati Children’s, Cleveland Clinic, Brigham and Women’s, Newton-Wellesley Hospital, and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. She has taught her cases in executive education programs for Harvard Medical School, Harvard School of Public Health, Harvard Macy’s Institute and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. She has presented her research at Boston Children’s Hospital, Johns Hopkins Hospital, Institute for Healthcare Improvement, Improvement Science Research Network, and Vermont Oxford Network.

Selected Research Presentations

Carson, A. , Manasseh, C. Bridging patient care silos: Co-location of cross functional teams to streamline patient flow, 4th Annual Research Roundtable: Data Analytics in Healthcare, Virtual University of Toronto, 2021

Publications

Minje, P., Carson, A., Erin, F., Conti, R. (In Press). “Stockpiling Medicines at the Onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Empirical Analysis of National Prescription Drug Sales and Prices”, Management Science

Adepoju, T., Carson, A., Jin, H., Manasseh, C. (In Press). “Hospital Boarding Crises: The Impact of Urgent Versus Prevention Responses on Length of Stay”, Management Science (3405617)

Feizi, A., Carson, A., Berry Jaeker, J., Baker, W. (In Press). “To Batch or Not to Batch? Impact of Admission Batching on Emergency Department Boarding Time and Physician Productivity”, Operations Research

Feizi, A., Tucker, A., Berry Jaeker, J., Baker, W. (In Press). “To Batch or Not to Batch? Impact of Admission Batching on Emergency Department Boarding Time and Physician Productivity”, SSRN Electronic Journal

(2024). “Editorial Statement—Healthcare Management”, Management Science, 70 (5), vi-vi

Adepoju, T., Carson, A., Jin, H., Manasseh, C. (2023). “Hospital Boarding Crises: The Impact of Urgent vs. Prevention Responses on Length of Stay”, Management Science, 69 (10), 5948-5963

Park, M., Carson, A., Conti, R. (2023). “Linking Medication Errors to Supply Chain Disruptions: Evidence from Heparin Shortages Caused by Hurricane Maria”, SSRN Electronic Journal

Song, H., Tucker, A., Graue, R., Moravick, S., Yang, J. (2020). “Capacity Pooling in Hospitals: The Hidden Consequences of Off-Service Placement”, Management Science, 66 (9), 3825-3842

Tucker, A., Zheng, S., Gardner, J., Bohn, R. (2020). “When do Workarounds Help or Hurt Patient Outcomes? The Moderating Role of Operational Failures”, Journal of Operations Management 67-90

Berry Jaeker, J., Tucker, A. (2020). “The value of process friction: The role of justification in reducing medical costs”, Journal of Operations Management, 66 (1-2), 12-34

Roth, A., Tucker, A., Venkataraman, S., Chilingerian, J. (2019). “Being on the Productivity Frontier: Identifying “Triple Aim Performance” Hospitals”, Production and Operations Management

Tucker, A., Zheng, S., Ren, Z., Heineke, J., McLaughlin, A., Podell, A. (2018). “The Impact of Internal Service Quality on Preventable Adverse Events in Hospitals”, Production and Operations Management, 27 (12), 2201-2212

Mazza, M., Dynan, L., Siegel, R., Tucker, A. (2018). “Nudging Healthier Choices in a Hospital Cafeteria: Results From a Field Study”, Health Promotion Practice, 19 (6), 925-934

Fryer, A., Tucker, A., Singer, S. (2018). “The Impact of Middle Manager Affective Commitment on Perceived Improvement Program Implementation Success”, Health Care Management Review, 43 (3), 218-228

Song, H., Tucker, A., Murrell, K., Vinson, D. (2018). “Closing the Productivity Gap: Improving Worker Productivity Through Public Relative Performance Feedback and Validation of Best Practices”, Management Science, 64 (6), 2628-2649

Nembhard, I., Tucker, A. (2016). “Applying Organizational Learning Research to Accountable Care Organizations.”, Med Care Res Rev, 73 (6), 673-684

Tucker, A. (2016). “The Impact of Workaround Difficulty on Frontline Employees’ Response to Operational Failures: A Laboratory Experiment on Medication Administration”, Management Science, 62 (4), 1124-1144

Senot, C., Chandrasekaran, A., Ward, P., Tucker, A., Moffatt-Bruce, S. (2016). “The Impact of Combining Conformance and Experiential Quality on Hospitals’ Readmissions and Cost Performance”, Management Science, 62 (3), 829-848

Berry Jaeker, J., Tucker, A. (2016). “Past the Point of Speeding Up: The Negative Effects of Workload Saturation on Efficiency and Quality”, Management Science

Song, H., Tucker, A. (2016). “Performance Improvement in Health Care Organizations”, Foundations and Trends® in Technology, Information and Operations Management, 9 (3-4), 153-309

Song, H., Tucker, A., Murrell, K. (2015). “The Diseconomies of Queue Pooling: An Empirical Investigation of Emergency Department Length of Stay”, Management Science, 61 (12), 3032-3053

Tucker, A., Singer, S. (2015). “The Effectiveness of Management-By-Walking-Around: A Randomized Field Study”, Production and Operations Management, 24 (2), 253-271

Singer, S., Tucker, A. (2014). “The evolving literature on safety WalkRounds: emerging themes and practical messages.”, BMJ Qual Saf, 23 (10), 789-800

Senot, C., Chandrasekaran, A., Ward, P., Tucker, A. (2013). “Do Professional Service Organizations Financially Benefit from Conformance and Experiential Quality?”, Academy of Management Proceedings, 2013 (1), 11058-11058

Nembhard, I., Tucker, A. (2011). “Deliberate Learning to Improve Performance in Dynamic Service Settings: Evidence from Hospital Intensive Care Units”, Organization Science, 22 (4), 907-922

Tucker, A., Singer, S., Hayes, J., Falwell, A. (2008). “Front-line staff perspectives on opportunities for improving the safety and efficiency of hospital work systems.”, Health Serv Res, 43 (5 Pt 2), 1807-1829

Tucker, A. (2007). “An Empirical Study of System Improvement by Frontline Employees in Hospital Units”, Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, 9 (4), 492-505

Tucker, A., Nembhard, I., Edmondson, A. (2007). “Implementing New Practices: An Empirical Study of Organizational Learning in Hospital Intensive Care Units”, Management Science, 53 (6), 894-907

Tucker, A., Spear, S. (2006). “Operational failures and interruptions in hospital nursing.”, Health Serv Res, 41 (3 Pt 1), 643-662

Tucker, A. (2004). “The impact of operational failures on hospital nurses and their patients”, Journal of Operations Management, 22 (2), 151-169

Tucker, A., Edmondson, A. (2003). “Why Hospitals Don’t Learn from Failures: Organizational and Psychological Dynamics That Inhibit System Change”, California Management Review, 45 (2), 55-72

Tucker, A., Edmondson, A., Spear, S. (2002). “When problem solving prevents organizational learning”, Journal of Organizational Change Management, 15 (2), 122-137