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Dr. Biehl is a Professor at the Schulich School of Business. He teaches or has taught courses in Operations, Supply Chain, Analytics and Sustainable Management in various MBA and executive programs at York and elsewhere. He has been nominated for the Seymour Schulich Award for Teaching Excellence by his students and received the York University Merit Award several times.
Markus’ research focuses on responsible business practices and the interface between operations and information systems. He has received several research grants and awards for his papers. In his consulting practice he has advised public and private organizations on sustainable and global operations and supply chain issues.
Markus has served as Schulich’s Associate Dean, Academic, as Director of Schulich’s International MBA program, as Deputy Director of the Haub Program in Business Sustainability, and is a member of the Haub Program’s advisory board. He has chaired or co-chaired various committees at the Faculty and University level. He is also the founding faculty advisor of the Supply Chain and Operations Management Club (the YorkU student chapter of APICS).
Honours
2013 York University Merit Award
2013 Graduate Business Council (GBC) Administrator of the Year Award
2011 Best Paper Award, Nat'l Conference of the Decision Sciences Institute ("Is Safe Production an Oxymoron? Evidence from Ten Case Studies," with Mark Pagell, David A Johnston, Robert Klassen)
2009 Carolyn Dexter Award Nominee, Academy of Management (Toward Assessing Financial Returns from Green Structural and Infrastructural Expenditures, with Robert D. Klassen)
2009 Best Paper Award, Academy of Management ("Toward Assessing Financial Returns from Green Structural and Infrastructural Expenditures," with Robert Klassen)
2008 Nominated for the Seymour Schulich Award for Teaching Excellence (category: MBAs (Operating in a Networked Environment II)).
2006 Research Award, 18th International Conference on Systems Research, Informatics and Cybernetics (InterSymp), Baden-Baden (Germany)
2005 York University Merit Award
2005 Nominated for the Seymour Schulich Award for Teaching Excellence (category: MBAs (Operations Management and Quantitative Methods)).
2004 Nominated for the Seymour Schulich Award for Teaching Excellence (category: MBAs (Quantitative Methods))
2003 Research Award, 15th International Conference on Systems Research, Informatics and Cybernetics (InterSymp), Baden-Baden (Germany)
2003 York University Merit Award
2002 Research Award, 14th International Conference on Systems Research, Informatics and Cybernetics (InterSymp), Baden-Baden (Germany)
Recent Publications
Biehl, M., Gaimon, C., Subramanian, R. and Xiao, W. (2019), "Investment in Environmental Process Improvement", Production and Operations Management, 28(2), 407-420.
Abstract
“We analyze a firm’s investment in environmental process improvement (EPI) to reduce the environmental impact (EI) of its manufacturing processes in relation to various internal firm characteristics and in response to different external regulatory drivers. We provide a deep understanding of how these internal and external forces cause the firm to pursue EPI earlier or later in the planning horizon and at an increasing or a decreasing rate over time. In particular, we show how a regulator can drive different patterns of EPI over time through subsidies for EPI or penalties for EI. We also explore the impacts of two key operational capabilities of the firm—the production‐cost efficiency of EPI and the effectiveness of EPI in reducing EI—on the rate of EPI over time. We demonstrate that improvements in these operational capabilities contrastingly alter the timing of investments in EPI. Lastly, we demonstrate that a firm capable of leveraging EPI to enhance product functionality or command a reputational premium in the marketplace pursues a remarkably different pattern of EPI over time compared to a cost‐focused firm that only responds to regulatory forces.
“Biehl, M., Johnston, D., Klassen, R., Pagell, M. and Veltri, A. (2014), "Is Safe Production an Oxymoron? Exploring How Firms Manage Safety and Operations", Production and Operations Management, 23(7), 1161-1175.
Abstract
Is Safe Production an Oxymoron? Exploring How Firms Manage Safety and Operations
Biehl, M., Husted, B.W. and Salazar, J. (2012), "Thoughts on the Evaluation of Corporate Social Performance through Projects", Journal of Business Ethics, 105(2), 175-186.
KeywordsAbstract
Corporate social performance (CSP) has become a widely applied concept, discussed in most large firms’ corporate reports and the academic literature alike. Unfortunately, CSP has largely been employed as a way of demonstrating corporate social responsibility (CSR) in practice, or to justify the business case for CSR in academia by relating some measure of CSP to some measure of financial performance. In this article, we discuss multiple shortcomings to these approaches. We argue that (1) CSR activities need to be managed and measured as projects and aggregated to the business or corporate level using a project portfolio; (2) appropriate measures need to be identified that move away from reporting the firm’s activities toward quantifying actual social outcomes achieved; and (3) given the types of projects prevalent in CSR, statistical evaluation methods common in other fields (ideally, pre-test post-test control group designs, such as used in medicine or propensity score matching for ongoing or past projects) should be employed to properly measure outcomes. We make a first, albeit imperfect, attempt at using such an approach with data collected on behalf of the Patrimonio Hoy project, a well-publicized CSR initiative carried out by Cemex in Mexico. We show that the results from this data reinforce concerns voiced earlier in this article.
Courses Taught
BSUS 6300, Management Practices for Business Sustainability (MBA, IMBA, MES)
INTL 5302, Operating in a Networked Environment II (IMBA)
OMIS 5120, Introduction to Quantitative Methods (MBA, IMBA)
OMIS 5210, Operations Management (MBA)
OMIS 6210, Transportation and Logistics Management
OMIS 6500, Global Operations and Information Management (MBA, IMBA)
OMIS 7200, Strategic Operations Management (PhD)Grants
Project Title Role Award Amount Year Awarded Granting Agency Project TitleThe Safety Case for Business: A Multi- Stakeholder Examination of Best Practices and Health and Safety Outcomes, with Mark Pagell (PI), David Johnston, Robert Klassen, Anthony Veltri RoleCo-Investigator Award Amount$387,300.00 Year Awarded2008-2011 Granting AgencyWorkplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) - Research Grant Project Title"The Impact of Customers on the Manufacturer's Triple Bottom Line Performance, with Ashwin Joshi RolePrincipal Investigator Award Amount$82,000.00 Year Awarded2007-2011 Granting AgencySocial Sciences and Humanities Research Council - Research Grant Project TitleHow much pollution do Canadian SMEs REALLY generate? with Robert Klassen RolePrincipal Investigator Award Amount$35,000.00 Year Awarded2005-2006 Granting AgencyIndustry Canada Project TitleSustainable Manufacturing Strategies for Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises in Canada, with Robert Klassen (PI) RoleCo-Investigator Award Amount$25,000.00 Year Awarded2004-2005 Granting AgencyIndustry Canada Project TitleMethods for researching the impact of content diversity and group composition on the learning success and satisfaction of a diverse body of students, with Michael Wade RoleCo-Investigator Award Amount$30,000.00 Year Awarded2004-2005 Granting AgencyYork University Faculty Association - Release-Time Teaching Fellowship Project TitleMethods for researching the impact of content diversity and group composition on the learning success and satisfaction of a diverse body of students, with Michael Wade RoleCo-Investigator Award Amount$2,600.00 Year Awarded2004-2005 Granting AgencySchulich Centre for Teaching Excellence and the MBA Committee - Minor Research Award Project TitleGreen Supply Chain Management: Antecedents and Outcomes, with Ashwin Joshi RolePrincipal Investigator Award Amount$71,000.00 Year Awarded2003-2007 Granting AgencySocial Sciences and Humanities Research Council - Research Grant Project TitleOutsourcing Multiple Components of the Value Chain RolePrincipal Investigator Award Amount$20,000.00 Year Awarded2001-2003 Granting AgencyNatural Sciences and Engineering Research Council - Research Grant