Tuchman School of Management Hosting 2022 Decision Science Conference
Business majors, along with anyone interested in the theory and technology of organizational leadership, may attend the Northeast Decision Sciences Institute Annual Conference hosted by NJIT's Martin Tuchman School of Management in April 2022.
The event formed in 1972 and moves around the Northeast, but has never been in Newark until now, explained T. Homer Bonitsis, associate professor of finance in the Tuchman school and event program chair.
"We're anticipating a very large group for this regional conference. The board feels we'll have 300-400 participants this year," as the 2020 event was cancelled and the 2021 event was virtual, both due to the COVID pandemic, Bonitsis said.
"We're hoping to have many papers on issues related to the pandemic and decision-making, because if anything, what the pandemic has shown us is that the way we think about supply chains has to be re-thought. If you have an external shock to the system it disrupts the whole thing," he added.
From computer chips to masks to toilet paper, business leaders learned that just-in-time manufacturing is vulnerable, so they will have to decide whether to raise costs by making changes such as bringing manufacturing closer to home or increasing local stockpiles, explained Bonitsis. Or they can go back to just-in-time manufacturing when the supply chains are fixed, gambling that such events are unlikely to happen again anytime soon. The debate between offshoring and on-shoring is unlikely to be settled anytime soon, he said.
The debate between offshoring and on-shoring is unlikely to be settled anytime soon
Asked what advice he'd give to students who find themselves in such decision-making situations someday, "That's a difficult question," he said, given the umbrella issue of maximizing profits versus risking losses. There may need to be federal legislation for classifying everyday products as items of national security, he noted.
This is the second time that the conference's sponsoring organization, the Decision Sciences Institute, was impacted by a global health issue. In 1986, the group changed its name from the American Institute for Decision Sciences because of the AIDS epidemic. However, Bonitsis said he doesn't think the conferences at that time included AIDS-related topics, as that disease did not close the economy like COVID did.
Other aspects of the conference concern topics such as accounting, big data, cybersecurity, legalities, marketing and sustainability. Software increases as an important topic every year. In the future of decision science, "It's going to be much more quantitative. Probably it's going to get to the level where I would not understand it myself," Bonitsis said, only half joking.
Event activities are at the Robert Treat Hotel less than a mile from the NJIT campus. To register, NJIT students must join the overall Decision Sciences Institute for a one-time fee of $20 and register for the conference itself which usually costs $30. Students can enter the conference's poster contest and receive certificates or cash prizes.
