Two Georgia Tech Scheller College of Business faculty members and one Ph.D. graduate recently received the Best Paper Award from the Manufacturing & Service Operations Management (M&SOM) Journal for their research into how nonprofit organizations can maximize their social impact on distressed individuals.
The award was presented to Morvarid Rahmani, associate professor of Operations Management; Karthik Ramachandran, Dunn Family Professor of Operations Management; and Priyank Arora, former Ph.D. student at Scheller and current associate professor of Management Science at the University of South Carolina Darla Moore School of Business. Their paper, "Doing Less to Do More? Optimal Service Portfolio of Non-profits That Serve Distressed Individuals” was selected in a highly competitive process that included two rounds of voting by journal editors, associate editors, and community members. The panel reviewed three years of published papers in the M&SOM Journal and the award was announced at the recent MSOM conference in July.
“Working on this research project was both eye-opening and fulfilling. The entire experience of collaborating with those nonprofit organizations and helping them better measure and create impact was very rewarding,” said Rahmani.
Their research examines the effectiveness of nonprofit organizations that offer a wide range of services to distressed individuals. The researchers found that some nonprofit organizations might better serve their clients by providing fewer services and spending more time guiding clients to the right help.
“A fundamental challenge in any organization is how many products or services to offer. Several firms and nonprofits offer too many services under a wide umbrella. Our research challenges this approach and provides a more nuanced way of thinking about this question. Instead of offering more services, we show that providing fewer services while providing deeper guidance for clients or customers might generate greater impact,” said Ramachandran..
By emphasizing quality over quantity in their services, nonprofits might make a bigger difference. In the context of domestic violence support or homelessness assistance (which motivated their work), tailored help can be more effective than a one-size-fits-all approach.
This work would not have been possible without the support of research partners Daya and Georgia Works.
