Rob Glew

I am an Assistant Professor of Operations Management at Villanova School of Business.

I received my PhD in Industrial Engineering from the University of Cambridge, where I was supervised by Prof. Duncan McFarlane in the Distributed Information and Automation Lab at the Institute for Manufacturing (IfM).

My research addresses new and emerging forms of coordination where financial incentives are impossible or insufficient to achieve the desired outcomes. A significant area of my work is in volunteering and prosocial behavior, where I use econometrics, machine learning, and analytical modeling to study the behavioral foundations of in-person and online volunteering. I am particularly interested in online volunteering, such as ‘citizen science’, where operations management techniques offer the potential to expand the scale and improve the efficiency of projects pushing the frontier of natural science.

I have also studied coordination in innovation projects, in food supply chains, and in healthcare with a diverse set of statistical and analytical methods. Across all these settings (and more), managers face challenges that financial incentives alone cannot resolve, from food waste to pursuing novel innovation, my work helps find new tools to resolve these challenges.

I am always open to new collaborations and industry partnerships, particularly from students, junior faculty, and colleagues in connected disciplines.

Email: rglew — at — villanova —dot — edu

Latest News

  • I look forward to sharing my latest work on Citizen Science platform operations management on Philadelphia Operations and Technology Day, October 9th.

  • I’m excited to announce that from August 2026 I’ll be an Assistant Professor in Data Analytics and Applied Artificial Intelligence in the Department of Management and Operations at Villanova Business School.

  • 31st October 2025. My co-author, Setareh Farajollahzadeh and I are pleased to share our working paper “An Invisible Workforce: Managing Quality in the AI Supply Chain”. The paper can be found on SSRN via the “Research” tab of this website.

  • October 26th 2025. I presented by paper “Cultures for Innovation” at the INFORMS Annual Conference in Atlanta. It was great to meet old and new friends at our field’s largest conference.

  • October 8th 2025. I had the pleasure of sharing my research on innovation management at the University College Dublin Michael Smurfit Graduate School of Business. I enjoyed the great discussions with members of the SCM and IS groups.

  • My paper “Hold Me Accountable” with Claire Senot is now published in MSOM Articles in Advance. The full article can be found in the research tab.

  • With Javad Nasiry. We were awarded a $86,000 SSHRC grant for food waste research in April 2025.

  • Our research paper “Hold me Accountable” was featured in an article by McGill’s official thought leadership platform and a podcast interview:

    https://delve.mcgill.ca/listen/how-managers-can-restore-faith-in-humanity/

  • February 2025 - I had the pleasure of giving a guest lecture on operations and innovation management to MEng students at Oxford University.

  • February 2025 - An interview was featured on New York Newsday discussing how the threat posed by Chinese AI ChatBot ‘DeepSeek’.

  • January 2025 - I was interviewed on Montreal’s leading English language news radio, CJAD, on the future of jobs and work in a world of AI. The interview was also featured in a McGill press release.

  • October 2024 - I had the honour of presenting two working papers at INFORMS 2024 in Seattle: (1) No Spoilers with Javad Nasiry and (2) Cultures for Innovation with Jeremy-Hutchison-Krupat.

  • April 2024

    Rob presented two working papers at POMS in Minneapolis: ‘Make it Personal’ (with Claire Senot) and ‘No Spoilers’ (with Javad Nasiry).

  • April 2024

    Rob won the Desautels Faculty of Management Teaching Innovation Award 2024 for his work in revising two core BCom courses to make the material more engaging for students and bring DEI into the classroom.

  • January 2024

    Rob presented with joint work with Claire Senot ‘Make it Personal: Standardization and Prosocial Behavior” at the University of Toronto Rotman Business School.

  • December 2023

    Rob was awarded a $5000 seed grant to begin work on a research paper looking at diversity in medical appointments and volunteering. This will support data analysis for the paper ‘All by Myself’.