Charles Corbett
- Entrepreneurship
- Environmental Management
- Supply Chain Management
- Sustainable Operations
Biography
Charles Corbett joined the UCLA Anderson School of Management faculty in 1996 and holds a joint appointment at the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability.
A hallmark of Corbett’s research approach is adapting perspectives and methods from other disciplines. Early in his career, Corbett was one of the first researchers to model the conflicting interests of supply chain participants using game theory. He is among the pioneers studying sustainability in operations and supply chains, which continues to be his main focus.
“There’s a growing interest in environmental and social ‘behaviors’ or strategies,” Corbett says. “I’d like to see a lot more focus on quantitative measurement of environmental and social impacts in the academic literature.” Working with London-based CDP (formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project), the leading collector of data on firms’ greenhouse gas emissions and climate change strategies, Corbett and colleagues analyzed the carbon footprint in global supply chains of large firms to identify opportunities for cleaner, more sustainable processes. “Just measuring something like carbon footprint will often lead to improvements,” he says.
Appointed in 2020 as Anderson’s faculty vice chair, Corbett was the founding faculty director of Anderson’s Easton Technology Leadership Program (now the Easton Technology Management Center) and of the award-winning interdisciplinary UCLA Leaders in Sustainability graduate certificate program. He served as associate dean of the MBA program and, from 2009 to 2012, as faculty chairman and deputy dean for academic affairs at UCLA Anderson. “Playing a role in managing an organization as complex as a business school has certainly further enhanced my appreciation of the challenges executives face every day.”
Corbett was co-department editor for operations management at Management Science between 2017 and 2020 and served as editor-in-chief of Foundations and Trends in Technology, Information and Operations Management from 2008 to 2020.
Corbett has worked with teams of MBA students to study emerging areas such as green building, carbon footprinting in global firms and eco-labeling, and with Ph.D. students on many of his research projects. In the classroom, Corbett’s objective is to get students to think about processes. “There’s a very strong connection in my mind between quality of management in general and good understanding of operations and processes. And the beauty of operations is that some things don’t change.”
In spring 2020, during the initial spread of COVID-19 in the U.S., Corbett offered an elective on how the pandemic affects supply chain risk management, to provide students an opportunity to digest what was happening in the world. “We actually overestimate the likelihood of big disruptions, but we also underprepare,” he says. “That’s what we saw with COVID-19. If you build a more agile supply chain, that’s good no matter what.”
Education
Ph.D. Production and Operations Management, 1996, INSEAD
Drs. Operations Research, (M.Sc. equivalent) 1992, Erasmus University
Published Papers
Corbett, C.J. (2018). How Sustainable is Big Data? Production and Operations Management. doi: 10.1111/poms.12837.
Johnsen, C.J. and Voigt, G., Corbett, C.J. (2017). Behavioral Contract Design Under Asymmetric Forecast Information. Decision Sciences: A Journal of the Decision Sciences Institute.
Blanco, C.C., Caro, F., Corbett, C.J. (2019). Managing Safety-Related Disruptions: Evidence from the U.S. Nuclear Power Industry. Risk Analysis. doi: 10.1111/risa.13307.
Chen, L., Caro, F., Corbett, C.J., Ding, X. (2019). Estimating the environmental and economic impacts of widespread adoption of potential technology solutions to reduce water use and pollution: Application to China's textile industry. Environmental Impact Assessment Review. doi: 10.1016/j.eiar.2019.106293.
Atasu, A., Corbett, C.J., Huang, X., Toktay, L.B. (2019). Sustainable Operations Management Through the Perspective of Manufacturing & Service Operations Management. Manufacturing & Service Operations Management. doi: 10.1287/msom.2019.0804.
Blanco, C., Caro, F., Corbett, C.J. (2020). Do carbon abatement opportunities become less profitiable over time? A global firm-level perspective using CDP data. Science Direct. Energy Policy. doi: 10.1016/j.enpol.2020.111252
Blanco, C., Caro, F., Corbett, C.J. (2017). An inside perspective on carbon disclosure. Science Direct. In Press. doi: 10.1016/j.bushor.2017.05.007
Malloy, T.F., Zaunbrecher, V.M., Batteate, C.M., Blake, A., Carroll, W.F., Corbett, C.J., Foss Hansen, S., ...Thayer, K.A. (2017), Advancing Alternative Analysis: Integration of Decision Science. Environmental Health Perspectives. Vol. 125, doi: 10.1289/EHP483.
Blass, V. and Corbett, C. J. (2017), Same Supply Chain, Different Models: Integrating Perspectives from Life Cycle Assessment and Supply Chain Management. Journal of Industrial Ecology. doi:10.1111/jiec.12550
Yoo, O.S., Roels, G., Corbett, C.J. (2016) The Time-Money Trade-Off for Entrepreneurs: When to Hire the First Employee? Manufacturing & Service Operations Management. doi: 10.1287/msom.2016.0587.
Christian Blanco, Felipe Caro, Charles J. Corbett. (2016). The state of supply chain carbon footprinting: analysis of CDPdisclosures by US firms. Journal of Cleaner Production. Vol. 135, pp. 1189-1197.
Onesun Steve Yoo, Charles J. Corbett, Guillaume Roels (2016) Optimal Time Allocation for Process Improvement for Growth-Focused Entrepreneurs. Manufacturing & Service Operations Management 18(3):361-375.
Pavel Castka and Charles J. Corbett. (2015). Management Systems Standards: Diffusion, Impact and Governance of ISO 9000, ISO 14000, and Other Management Standards. Foundations and Trends in Technology, Information and Operations Management, Vol. 7, 3-4, pp. 161-379.
Pavel Castka and Charles J. Corbett. (2014). Governance of Eco-Labels: Expert Opinion and Media Coverage. Journal of Business Ethics, November.
Blass, V., C. Corbett, M. Delmas, S. Muthulingam. (2014). Top Management and the Adoption of Energy Efficiency Practices: Evidence from Small and Medium-Sized Manufacturing Firms in the US. Energy, Vol. 65, 560-571.
Felipe Caro, Charles J. Corbett, Tarkan Tan, Rob Zuidwijk. (2013). Double Counting in Supply Chain Carbon Footprinting.Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, 15(4) 545-558.
Muthulingam, S., C. Corbett, S. Benartzi, B. Oppenheim. (2013). Energy Efficiency in Small and Medium-Sized Manufacturing Firms: Order Effects and the Adoption of Process Improvement Recommendations. Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, 15(4) 596-615.
Sarang Deo and Charles J. Corbett. (Fall 2009). Cournot Competition under Yield Uncertainty: The Case of the U.S. Influenza Vaccine Market. Manufacturing and Service Operations Management, 11(4): 563-576.
Paulo Albuquerque, Bart J. Bronnenberg, and Charles J. Corbett. (March 2007). A Spatio-Temporal Analysis of the Global Diffusion of ISO 9000 and ISO 14000 Certification. Management Science, 53(3): 451-468.
Charles J. Corbett. (Fall 2006). Global Diffusion of ISO 9000 Certification Through Supply Chains. Manufacturing and Service Operations Management,8(4): 330-350.
Charles J. Corbett, and Kumar Rajaram. (Fall 2006). A Generalization of the Inventory Pooling Effect to Non-Normal Dependent Demand. Manufacturing and Service Operations Management, 8(4): 351-358.
Books
Bouchery, Y., Corbett, C.J., Fransoo, J.C., Tan, T. Sustainable Supply Chains A Research-Based Textbook on Operations and Strategy. Springer Series in Supply Chain Management.
Selected Awards and Distinctions
Jo van Nunen Pioneer in Closed-Loop Supply Chain Research Award, 2019
Fellow, Manufacturing, Service and Operations Management Society, 2019
Fellow, Production and Operations Management Society, 2013
Dean’s Prize for Exceptional Faculty Mentorship, 2011
J. Clayburn LaForce Faculty Leadership Award 2012
Citibank Teaching Award, 2008
UCLA Staff Assembly’s Faculty/Staff Partnership Award, 2007
Executive MBA Class of 2006 Outstanding Teaching Award, 2006
Robbins Assistant Professor Teaching Award, 2002
AT&T Faculty Fellow in Industrial Ecology, 1997–99