On July 7 and 8 the Barcelona campus hosted the 4th Annual Symposium on Finance and the Supply Chain. Renowned international experts, both academics and industry professionals, discussed the latest research and recent business experiences related to the financial risks and the repercussions in managing supply chains. The conference analyzed the supply chain from a business perspective with a focus on dealing with risk and financial challenges.
The 4th Symposium’s academic committee comprised IESE professors Víctor Martínez de Albéniz and Wei Luo, as well as Alejandro Serrano, a researcher at the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics and Director of the MIT-Zaragoza International Logistics Program. “The symposium has brought together researchers who work at the interface of operations and finance which has led to a novel exchange of information at the conference,” observed Martínez de Albéniz.
Burak Kazaz, the Laura J. and L. Douglas Meredith Professor of Teaching Excellence and associate professor of Supply Chain Management at Martin J. Whitman School of Management in the University of Syracuse led the opening session. He examined the studies on hiring and bankruptcy risk carried out by Vlad Babich of Georgetown University and Song Alex Yang of the London Business School. Nicola Secomandi, associate professor of Operations Management at Carnegie Mellon University, and Onur Boyabatli, professor of Managing Operations of Lee Kong Chian School of Business of Singapore Management University, discussed the risks of dealing in and managing raw materials. Professor Boyabatli later led the afternoon session on covering and managing risk.
The second day began with a session on the impact of financial risk on operational decisions. Peter Berling of Lund University talked about the influence that financial risk has on decisions concerning inventory control, while Fehmi Tanrisever of Bilkent University presented his study on managing friction in the market during the investment process.
The following session covered empirical research on the interface of operations management finances. John Birge of the University of Chicago presented the study “The structure of the supply chain network and the risks of expansion” and Sridhar Seshadri from the Indian School of Business presented his work on “Systematic risk and covering redundancies: evidence from the industrial sector in the United States.”
Financial contracts in operations management were one of the topics concluding the day. Jiri Chod of Boston College analyzed the “The agency theory of commercial credit” and Dan Iancu of Stanford University addressed the “operationalization” of financial agreements. The 4th Symposium concluded with a session on the industrial perspective on finance and the supply chain while IESE Prof. Wei Luo led the closing session.