Kathryn Marley is an Assistant Professor of Supply Chain Management at Duquesne University. Professor Marley teaches supply chain and operations management courses in the undergraduate and graduate programs.  In the undergraduate program, she teaches the core Supply Chain and Operations Management course and an elective course in process improvement, entitled Supply Chain Techniques.

Kathryn's research interests are in the areas of lean management, supply chain disruptions, sustainability within supply chains and teaching methods. Her work has been published in Decision Sciences, Business and Society and Spreadsheets in Education.

Prior to joining the faculty at Duquesne, Professor Marley was an Assistant Professor at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio.  She holds a Ph.D and M.A. in Business Administration from The Ohio State University, an MBA from the University of Akron and a B.A. from Grove City College.

Drake, M., & Marley, K. (2008). The Evolution of Quick Response Programs. In T. C. E. C. a. T.-M. Choi (Ed.), Innovative Quick Response Programs in Logistics & Supply Chain Management: Springer.

Weber, J. & Marley, K. (2009). In Search of Stakeholder Salience: Exploring Corporate Social and Sustainability Reports. Academy of Management (SIM Division), Chicago, Illinois.

Marley, K. & Stodnick, M. (2009). Teaching the Basics of Lean. Decision Sciences Institute Annual Meeting, New Orleans, Louisiana.

Stodnick, M. & Marley, K. (2009). A Longitudinal Examination of Student Expectations. Decision Sciences Institute Annual Meeting, New Orleans, Louisiana.

My research interests are in the areas of lean management, supply chain disruptions, sustainability within supply chains and teaching methods.  Lean management is an area of great interest to me in teaching and research.  One of my working papers describes how this topic can most effectively be taught within a core operations management or supply chain management course and involves analysis of survey data to develop a "lean teaching agenda."  Within my working papers, I also examine how implementation of lean management can protect firms against experiencing supply chain disruptions.  To accomplish this, I use organizational accident theories that focus on the relationship between high levels of interactive complexity and coupling (or buffering) and a high propensity for experiencing accidents.  In my research, I use empirical data to suggest that high levels of complexity make a firm more vulnerable to experiencing disruptions and that implementing lean management can serve as an effective mitigation strategy.  In the future, I would like to apply these ideas to the service industry, particularly in the area of healthcare.  In addition, I recently received a School of Business Research grant to explore the relationship between sustainability and supply chain performance using KLD and Compustat data.