Research — Jordan D. Tong

Research

Research overview

I study the human judgments and decisions that drive operations — forecasting demand, managing inventory, evaluating quality, screening candidates, admitting patients — and why they go systematically wrong. These errors often arise not from flawed thinking alone, but from the interaction between human cognition and the structure of operational systems. That interaction matters because operations are where errors compound — propagating through supply chains, service systems, and hiring funnels — and because it points to remedies that redesign the process rather than just retrain the decision-maker.

Methodologically, my work often embeds behavioral theory from psychology and economics into operations models, and tests predictions with controlled experiments and field data. Much of my current research examines settings where humans and AI make decisions together: when human judgment adds value to algorithmic predictions, how people learn to trust or distrust AI, and how decision processes should be designed around the strengths of each. Other current work studies judgment biases in multistage screening processes, and how to structure decision processes in healthcare settings, from hospital admissions to doctor–patient shared decision-making.

Publications

Peer-reviewed journal articles

Kim E, Long X, Tong J (2026) Fair funnels: Bias, performance, and interventions in multistage hiring processes. Ahead of print at Manufacturing & Service Operations Management.PDF Appendix
Balakrishnan M, Ferreira K, Tong J (2026) Human-algorithm collaboration with private information: Naïve advice weighting behavior and mitigation. Management Science 72(1):265–284.PDF Appendix Data
Disorbo M, Ferreira K, Balakrishnan M, Tong J (2025) Warnings and endorsements: Improving human-AI collaboration in the presence of outliers. Manufacturing & Service Operations Management 27(6):1814–1831.PDF Appendix Data
Kim SH, Tong J (2024) Admission control bias and path-dependent feedback under diagnosis uncertainty. Manufacturing & Service Operations Management 26(1):117–136.PDF Appendix Data
Davis A, Flicker B, Hyndman K, Katok E, Keppler S, Leider S, Long X, Tong J (2023) A replication study of operations laboratory experiments published in Management Science. Management Science 69(9):4973–5693.PDF Appendix Data & materials
Feiler D, Tong J (2022) From noise to bias: Overconfidence in new product forecasting. Management Science 68(6):3975–4753.PDF Appendix Data
Ibrahim R, Kim SH, Tong J (2021) Eliciting human judgment for prediction algorithms. Management Science 67(4):1993–2656.PDF Appendix Data Video
DeCroix G, Long X, Tong J (2021) How service quality variability hurts revenue when customers learn: Implications for dynamic personalized pricing. Operations Research 69(3):683–708.PDF
Kim SH, Tong J, Peden C (2020) Admission control biases in hospital unit capacity management: How occupancy information hurdles and decision noise impact utilization. Management Science 66(11):4921–5484.PDF Appendix Data
Batt R, Tong J (2020) Mean service metrics: Biased quality judgment and the customer-server quality gap. Manufacturing & Service Operations Management 22(5):975–995.PDF Appendix
Tong J, DeCroix G, Song J-S (2020) Modeling payment timing in multiechelon inventory systems with applications to supply chain coordination. Manufacturing & Service Operations Management 22(2):346–363.PDF Appendix
Tong J, Feiler D, Larrick R (2018) A behavioral remedy for the censorship bias. Production & Operations Management 27(4):624–643.PDF
Tong J, Feiler D, Ivantsova A (2018) Good choice, bad judgment: How choice under uncertainty generates overoptimism. Psychological Science 29(2):254–265.PDF Appendix
Tong J, Feiler D (2017) A behavioral model of forecasting: Naive statistics on mental samples. Management Science 63(11):3609–3627.PDF
Liu F, Song J-S, Tong J (2016) Building supply chain resilience through virtual stockpile pooling. Production & Operations Management 25(10):1745–1762.PDF Appendix
Huang L, Song J-S, Tong J (2016) Supply chain planning for random demand surges: Reactive capacity and safety stock. Manufacturing & Service Operations Management 18(4):509–524.PDF Appendix
Feiler D, Tong J, Larrick R (2013) Biased judgment in censored environments. Management Science 59(3):573–591.PDF
Chen L, Kok AG, Tong J (2013) The effect of payment schemes on inventory decisions: The role of mental accounting. Management Science 59(2):436–451.PDF Appendix Replication report

Practitioner articles

Ferreira K, Tong J (2026) How AI agents orchestrate work across silos. Harvard Business Review 104(5), September–October 2026.

Selected working papers

Lin W, Kim SH, Tong J (2026) Revisiting the cause of algorithm aversion: Algorithm feedback asymmetry in the field and lab.
Tuncalp F, Ibrahim R, Kim SH, Tong J (2026) Designing doctor-patient shared decision-making processes under bounded rationality.
Feiler D, Tong J (2026) Bias in managerial judgment of operational processes: Hasty expectations under input uncertainty.

Book chapters

Davis A, Tong J (2023) Behavioral inventory management. In The Research Handbook on Inventory Management, ed. Jing-Sheng (Jeannette) Song. Edward Elgar Publishing.PDF