Dissertation award for bridging the gap between theory and practice through Design Science

Mikael Öhman’s doctoral dissertation “Design science in operations management: extracting knowledge from maturing designs” won the dissertation of the year award at the Finnish Production Planning and Control Society’s fall seminar, 26.11.2019. The doctoral dissertation was supervised by prof. Jan Holmström.

The dissertation is a methodological compilation of four research papers, each of which reports a Design Science-study in Operations Management. In his dissertation, Mikael argues that the nascent methodological debate on Design Science as a research approach in Operations Management should be based on and built around the concept of design maturity. And that doing so creates the preconditions for Design Science to bridge the gap between practice and theory – which has been a persistent concern of operations management scholars – securing the relevance and increasing the impact of future Operations Management research.

In addition to the practical impact of the individual studies that comprise the dissertation, the award committee saw that the dissertation represents strong scientific research, which offers interesting opportunities for further research and practical applications, benefitting members of the Society.

Link to the dissertation: https://aaltodoc.aalto.fi/handle/123456789/37567

Link to The Finnish Production Planning and Control Society: http://www.sto-ry.com/