On the afternoon of June 13th, Assistant Professor Zou Fan from Department of Supply Chain and Information Systems at Smeal College of Business, Pennsylvania State University, was invited to visit School of Management to deliver an academic lecture titled “Project-based Supply Chain Data and Analysis: The Case of Supply Innovation”. Associate Professor Li Ying from Department of Project Management and Industrial Engineering at School of Management, Shandong University presided over the lecture.
Zou shared insights and engaged in discussions with faculty and students from the aspects of supply chain research questions, data sources, endogeneity, data analysis, and causal analysis. He began by introducing the current data sources for supply chain research, primarily derived from government and research institutions. By quantitatively comparing three types of database resources, he provided a clear visualization of current trends in popular databases. Additionally, in terms of supply chain research, he mainly focused on supply chain networks, supply bases, and buyer-supplier dyadic relationships. He also shared data and models from three high-quality articles. Finally, he provided an in-depth explanation of causal inference in empirical research, including basic concepts of causal analysis, construction of control groups, and estimation of causal inference. After the lecture, Zou engaged in in-depth discussions with faculty and students on topics including database resources, data processing methods, causal analysis, and empirical research based on secondary data.
Zou Fan is an assistant professor of Department of Supply Chain and Information Systems at Smeal College of Business, Pennsylvania State University. He previously served as an assistant professor at College of Business, Florida State University. He earned his Bachelor's and Master's degrees from School of Economics at Shandong University, and completed his PhD in Management Science at Darla Moore School of Business, University of South Carolina, in 2022. His main research fields include supply chain networks, corporate innovation and technology management, and the application of empirical methods in supply chain research. His work has been published in top journals, including Management Science, Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, and Journal of Operations Management.
