Biography

Ali Nazarpour is PhD researcher in Supply Chain Management at UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School. Ali holds a BSc degree in Industrial Engineering and a masters degree in Business Administration from Iran University of Science and Technology. Prior to PhD, he worked for two years in the construction sector and seven years in the automotive industry where he served as Sales Supervisor, Marketing and Sales Planning Chief, and Inventory Control Project Manager. Parallel to working in industry Ali was also engaged in teaching and research activities. Because of his interest in academia he joined Smurfit in 2011 and continued his career as PhD researcher and part-time lecturer.

Ali’s PhD research contributes to the debate on the existence of the operational trade-offs in manufacturing plants. In doing so, he focuses on the relationships between mass customization capability, cost performance and flexibility performance. In addition, drawing on the contingency theory he looks at the capability-performance relationships in different contexts (countries) and tests whether or not country level indices of logistics performance, risk and educational sophistication have moderating effect on the relevant relationships. Ali’s research is novel as the mass customization literature shows very little studies but recent research calls at this area. Moreover, he is utilizing both survey (Global Manufacturing Research Group) and secondary data (World Bank and United Nations) to test the hypotheses as novel approach in operations management. He is working under the supervision of Prof. Brian Fynes and advisory panel of Dr. Eamonn Ambrose, Prof. Mark Pagell, and Dr. Frank Wiengarten. Prior to PhD, Ali published number of articles on Business Models and Strategic Management in Persian journals. During his PhD, Ali presented the following works:

Nazarpour, A. Fynes, B. Wiengarten, F. Fischl, M. Sohrabpour, V. “The effect of country level factors on the trade-off between cost and flexibility in mass customization”, 22nd European Operations Management Association (EurOMA) Conference, Neuchatel, Switzerland, June 2015.

Fischl, M. Sohrabpour, V. Nazarpour, A. “Passing the buck: transferring unanticipated purchase prices to suppliers and customers”, 26th Production and Operations Management Society (POMS) Conference, Washington D.C., USA, May 2015.

Nazarpour, A. Fischl, M. Sohrabpour, V. Fynes, B. “The Impact of Investments in Innovation Practices on Mass Customization Capability”, 21st European Operations Management Association (EurOMA) Conference, Palermo, Italy, June 2014.