Portrait image for Uday Karmarkar

Uday Karmarkar

The Los Angeles Times Professor of Technology and Strategy
“All major economies are shifting to services and information, with the confluence of ‘information intensive services’ dominating in GNP and wage shares. The driving process can be thought of as technology enabled ‘service industrialization’ which is leading to significant changes for industry sectors, organizations, work processes and of course, jobs.“
Areas of Expertise:
  • Corporate Strategy
  • Global Competition
  • Industrial and Technology Marketing
  • Manufacturing Strategy
  • Service Management
  • Technology Management
  • The Digital Economy
About
 
 

Biography

Uday Karmarkar began his teaching career as an assistant professor at the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business. He later moved to the Simon School at University of Rochester, where he was Xerox Chair Professor of Operations Management and directed the Center for Manufacturing and Operations Management. At UCLA Anderson, he has been the Los Angeles Times Chair in Technology and Strategy since 1994 and UCLA Distinguished Professor in Decisions, Operations and Technology Management, an area group that he notes is arguably “one of the best in the world.”

His recent research has focused on information-intensive industries, and operations and technology strategy for manufacturing and service firms. As the impact of technology and globalization is causing dramatic changes in many sectors in the U.S. and other major economies, his recent research addresses changes in employment and wages which have shown greater movement in services and information since 2000. Despite the fact that more areas of business are being automated, outsourced, off-shored or transformed by self-service, Karmarkar expects continued demand for MBA skills in the U.S. job market, with the greatest demand for workers who are creative, technologically savvy, analytical problem solvers, and able to work well with colleagues and customers. “Many of these skills involve complex tacit knowledge, which cannot easily be codified, off-shored or automated.”

Karmarkar has undertaken over 50 consulting and research projects on corporate strategy, digital transformation, supply chain management, e-business, industrial marketing, organizational restructuring and technology management for a wide array of companies in the United States, Europe and Asia. Among them are the Aditya Birla Group (India), Becton Dickinson (US and Japan), American Cimflex, Deere and Company, Eastman Kodak, Ford, GM, LA CRA, LA MTA, WW Grainger, Hindustan Lever (India), IBM, Singapore IDA, Thomson Publishing (multiple companies), USG and Xerox Corp. He has been an advisor to or director of startup companies engaged in sectors such as eCRM, ERP, web design, content creation, online education and data analytics software.

Karmarkar has published more than 100 research papers, book chapters and articles and has co-edited six research volumes. He has been invited to present his work at some 100 academic institutions around the world. He was a founding editor of the Journal of Manufacturing and Operations Management, the Technology and Operations Review and Current Trends and Foundations; he has served as associate editor or advisory editor of several other journals. He was the founder and director of the global Business and Information Technologies Project (BIT), which studied the impact of new online information and communication technologies on business practices worldwide with a network of partners in 16 countries. He has been a visitor at Erasmus University (Rotterdam), SDA Bocconi (Milano, Italy), MISB (Mumbai, India), Twente University (Netherlands), Alba (Greece), Theseus Institute (Nice, France), Nijenrode (Netherlands), University of Berne (Switzerland), SNU (Korea) and Korea University.

When Karmarkar is not conducting research on the U.S. economy, restructuring industry sectors, digital strategies or the design of consumer “experience,” he might be found on the squash court.

Courses: Courses and Teaching

Global Operations and Technology Strategy
Managing Services
Managing in the Digital Economy
Technology Management

 

Education

Ph.D. Management Science, 1975, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
B.Tech. Chemical Engineering, 1968, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay

 

Published Papers

Research Statement, November 5, 2015

The US economy is now overwhelmingly dominated by service industries in terms of GNP share, employment and wage bill share.  Within services, information intensive sectors have the larger share of GNP, jobs and wages.  Our recent research has been directed towards services, with a focus on information intensive services, and the effects of technologies on sector structure.  Our research spans analytical models (e.g. of information chains, processes, and competition), sector studies, case studies, and surveys.  Some of this research is conducted through the global Business and Information Technologies (BIT) network, which in 2015 has 19 partners in 16 countries.   We are in the process of expanding this network, to be more open and transparent.

Apte U., U. Karmarkar, H. Nath, “Information Services in the US Economy: Value, Jobs and Management Implications”, California Management Review (2008)

Apte U., U. Karmarkar, H. Nath, “The US Information Economy: Value, Employment, Industry Structure and Trade”, Foundations and Trends in TIOM, 6, 1-87 (2012)

Apte, U., U. Karmarkar, H. Nath.  “The Growth of Information-Intensive Services in the U.S. Economy”. Ch. 10 in Bryson J., P. Daniels, (Eds), Handbook of Service Business: Management, Marketing, Innovation and Internationalization. Elgar (2015).

Karmarkar U., H. Rhim, K. Kim “Industrialization, Productivity and the Shift to Services and Information”, Production and Operations Management (2015)

BIT project takes a global perspective on technology trends.  The central subject of the project has been the broad pattern of information technology adoption, and industry impact in those countries. The research of the partners in the network  has been collected in papers and four edited volumes:

Karmarkar, U., “The Global Information Economy, Service Industrialization and the UCLA BIT Project”, in Hefley, Bill, Wendy Murphy (Eds.), Service Science Management and Engineering, Springer (2008)

Karmarkar U. and V. Mangal,  “Information Technology Impact on Business Practices: The UCLA BIT Project”, in Apte U. and U. Karmarkar (Eds), Managing in the Information Economy: Current Research Issues, Springer Science (2007). 

Karmarkar U. and V. Mangal, The Business and Information Technologies (BIT) Project: A Global Survey of Business Practice, World Scientific Press (2007).

Karmarkar U. and V. Mangal, The Business and Information Technologies (BIT) Project: A Global Survey of Business Practice, World Scientific Press (2009).

Mangal V. and U. Karmarkar, The Business and Information Technologies (BIT) Project: A Global Survey of Business Practice, World Scientific Press (2012).

Mangal V., A. Mandelli, A. LaRocca, U. Karmarkar, The Business and Information Technologies (BIT) Project: A Global Survey of Business Practice, World Scientific Press (to appear 2016).

A managerial perspective on the transformation of information intensive services and sectors through technology and the process of “ industrialization”, is presented in the following papers and articles:

Karmarkar, U. "Financial Service Networks: Access, Cost Structure and Competition",  in Melnick, E., P. Nayyar, M. Pinedo, and S. Seshadri (Eds.),Creating Value in Financial Services, Kluwer (2000)

Bashyam A., U. Karmarkar, “Aspect Development Inc (A)”, in J. De La Torre, Y.Doz and T. Devinney (editors), Managing the Global Corporation: Case Studies in Strategy and Management, McGraw Hill, New York. (2000)

Karmarkar, U., “Will you Survive the Services Revolution”, Harvard Business Review, June (2004)

Bashyam, A., U. Karmarkar "Usage Volume and Value Segmentation in Business Information Services", in Chakravarty A. and J. Eliashberg (Eds.), Managing Business  Interfaces:  Marketing, Engineering, and Manufacturing Perspectives, Kluwer Academic Publishers (2004).

Karmarkar, U., U. Apte “Operations Management in the Information Economy: Products, Processes and Chains”, Journal of Operations Management, 25, 438–453(2007)

Apte U. and U. Karmarkar, “Business Process Outsourcing and ‘Off-shoring’: The Globalization of Information-Intensive Services”, in Uday Apte and Uday Karmarkar (Eds),  Managing in the Information Economy: Current Research Issues, Springer Science (2007).

Bashyam A., U. Karmarkar,  “Service Design, Competition and Market Segmentation in Business Information Services with Data Updates”,  in Uday Apte and Uday Karmarkar (Eds), Managing in the Information Economy: Current Research Issues, Springer Science (2007).

Karmarkar, U.,  “The Industrialization of Information Services”,  in Maglio Paul, Cheryl Kieliszewski, and James C. Spohrer (eds.), The Handbook of Services Science, Springer Science, NY (2010)

Mangal V., U. Karmarkar,  “Global Trends for Technology Adoption – Results of the BIT Survey across Ten Countries, in Mangal V. and U. Karmarkar (eds.), The UCLA Anderson Business and Information Technologies (BIT) Project, World Scientific Publishing (2012)

Choi, D., H. Rhim, U. Karmarkar,  “Service Technology, Pricing and Process Economics in Banking Competition”, in Faulin et al.(eds), Decision Making in Service Industries, CRC Press (2013)

Karmarkar, U., “Service Industrialization”.  in Baglieri E., U. Karmarkar (eds.).  The Future of Services.  Springer, Heidelberg. (2014).

Within the broader topic of services, our research has addressed some of the special features of these sectors, beyond technological changes.  There are many special features of service industries that have received less attention in past research.  These include topics such as services strategy, collaboration and joint production, the design of “experiential” services, and the management of teams and collaborative projects. Papers and (edited) books on these topics include:

Lele, M., U. Karmarkar, "Good Product Support is Smart Marketing", Harvard Business Review, 61, 124-132 (1983). 

Karmarkar U., R. Pitbladdo, "Service Markets and Competition", Journal of Operations Management, 12, 397-411 (1995)

Apte, U., U. Karmarkar, R. Pitbladdo, "Quality Management in Services: Analysis and Applications", in The Practice of Quality Management, Karmarkar, U.S., and P. Lederer (Eds.), Kluwer (1997)

Roels G., U. Karmarkar, S. Carr “Contracting for Collaborative Services”,  Management Science,56, 5, 849-863 (2010)

Karmarkar, U., “Service Industrialization”.  Ch.2 in Baglieri E., U. Karmarkar (eds.).  Managing Consumer Services.  Springer, Switzerland. (2014).  

Karmarkar U., U. Karmarkar.  “Customer Experience and Service Design”.  Ch.7 in Baglieri E., U. Karmarkar (eds.).  Managing Consumer Services.  Springer Switzerland (2014).

Baglieri, E., U. Karmarkar (Eds), Managing Consumer Services: Factory or Theater, Springer Switzerland (2014)

Rahmani, M., G. Roels, and U.S. Karmarkar, Free-riding in Team Projects: The Role of Leadership Style.  Being revised (2015)

Rahmani, M., G. Roels, and U.S. Karmarkar, Contracting and Work Dynamics in Collaborative Projects. Submitted (2015)

Dasgupta A., U. Karmarkar and G. Roels “The Design of Experiential Services with Acclimation and Memory Decay : Optimal Sequence and Duration”, Management Science (2015)

Karmarkar U., G. Roels, "An Analytical Framework for Value Co-Production in Services". Service Science (2015)

Finally, while there has been a decline in those sectors, manufacturing and supply chain management remain as substantial and important parts of the US economy.   Research on the strategic aspects of those topics includes the following work:

Karmarkar, U., "Getting Control of Just-in-Time", Harvard Business Review, 89, 122-131, (1989). Reprinted in, Pisano, G. and R. Hayes (eds.), Manufacturing Renaissance,  HBP (1995).

Johansen, J., U. Karmarkar, D. Nanda, A. Seidmann, "Business Experience with Computer Integrated Manufacturing:  A Survey of Current Strategy and Practice", Proceedings of HICSS 95 , (1995)

Karmarkar U., R.Pitbladdo "Quality, Class and Competition", Management Science, 43, 27-39 (1997)

Karmarkar U., "Integrative Research in Marketing and Operations", Journal of Marketing Research, (1996).

Corbett C., U. Karmarkar, “Competition and Structure in Serial Supply Chains”,  Management Science, 47, 966-978 (2001)

Karmarkar, U., M. Lele, "The Marketing / Manufacturing Interface: Strategic Issues”, in Managing Business  Interfaces:  Marketing, Engineering, and Manufacturing Perspectives, Chakravarty A. and J. Eliashberg (Eds.), Kluwer Academic Publishers (2004).

Carr, S., U. Karmarkar, “Competition in Multi-echelon Assembly Supply Chains”, Management Science. 51 (1), 45-59 (2005)

Karmarkar U., K. Rajaram, “Aggregate Production Planning for Process Industries under Oligopolistic Competition”, European Journal of Operational Research, 223, 680–689 (2012)

Zhou D., U. Karmarkar, B. Jiang, “Competition in multi-echelon distributive supply chains with linear demand”. Int. J. Production Research (2015). 

 

Recognition

Distinguished Fellow, MSOM (Informs), 2014
Laudatio, POM Journal, 2012
Institute Fellow, IITB, 2008
IBM Faculty Research Award, 2004
Distinguished Service Award MSOM (Informs), 2003
Distinguished Service Award IITB, 2003
Distinguished Alumnus IITB, 1997

 

Video

December Forecast 2015 Keynote Speaker Highlights