About

Thomas Choi is a Regents Professor of Arizona State University and the AT&T Professor of Business at the W. P. Carey School of Business. His research focuses on supply chain management, particularly on the upstream side of supply chains where a buying company interfaces with multiple suppliers organized into various network structures. He has studied supply networks as complex adaptive systems and has contributed to understanding their design, management, and performance through empirical and simulation-based research. Choi has published extensively in leading academic journals and has co-authored practitioner books on supply management, including topics such as supply chain financing. He serves as co-director of the Complex Adaptive Supply Networks Research Accelerator (CASN-RA), an international research group, and has collaborated with numerous public and private organizations, including Honda, LG Electronics, Samsung, Toyota, Volvo, and the U.S. Department of Energy. Choi has held leadership roles such as the Harold E. Fearon Chair of Purchasing Management and was co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Operations Management. His work has been recognized as highly influential, with listings as a Highly Cited Researcher and rankings among top researchers in supply chain management. His educational background includes a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan and a B.A. from the University of California-Berkeley.

Research topics

• Business
• Marketing
• Computer Science
• Sociology
• Industrial organization
• Finance
• Political Science
• Knowledge management
• Economics
• Environmental resource management
• Process management
• Ecology
• Microeconomics
• Operations management
• Commerce
• Macroeconomics

Selected publications

• Clarifying the purpose of supply chain financing: A response to ‘On what is being funded’

  Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management · 2026-02-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  • We agree with Professor Gelsomino (2024) that supply chain financing (SCF) literature has been too tactical and limited in focus. • Profit and cash flow are results of the business , and they are captured in the company’s financials. The intertwined nature of these concepts is more than just a choice a firm makes. • Although cash flow is central to firm survival and strategic flexibility, it has received surprisingly limited theoretical attention in the supply chain management literature. This focus reflects a structural separation between SCM and corporate finance. • Maintaining positive cash flow before profitability arrives can be enabled by utilizing innovative SCF techniques. • The embedded nature of supply chain capital makes transactional arrangements, rather than financing contracts, the primary mechanism through which liquidity is created, shifted, and allocated within and across firms. • SCF involves both funding the organization through the supply chain and funding the supply chain through the organization ( Leuschner, et al., 2023 ). • Using the organization to fund the supply chain generates strategic benefits that extend beyond short-term liquidity support to suppliers and customers and can be explained through multiple organizational theories. • The goal of supply chain management is to optimize the financial flow of a focal company, and the means to this is to adopt a SCF orientation.

  PublisherDOI

• Uncertainty regulation and adaptable supply chain planning

  International Journal of Operations & Production Management · 2025-10-22 · 3 citations

  articleSenior author

  Purpose Supply chain planning (SCP) as an important management intervention is highly relevant to operations and supply chain practice. While SCP processes have developed over time with the use of integrative and advanced analytics tools, the essential foundation and focus on restoring stability remain unchanged and limit the capacity of SCP to adapt to uncertainty. We aim to address this limitation and the way forward in research and practice of SCP through adaptable supply chain planning (ASCP). Design/methodology/approach Drawing on the current discourse on uncertainty regulation and SCP foundations and assumptions, a typology of SCP uncertainty and respective planning strategies are conceptualized. Findings To elevate SCP to account for today's volatile environment, we put forward various forms of uncertainty that organizations face with respect to their awareness and understanding of threats from uncertainty. We also consider how conditions require simultaneously using different planning strategies and navigating between the strategies to regulate the uncertainty, not only to mitigate it but also to create opportunities for progress and growth. Originality/value We propose a new ASCP paradigm with foundational principles, planning strategies and layers of potential research avenues.

  PublisherDOI

• Strange Dance Partners: Supply Chain Cyberattacks and Chained Vulnerability

  Journal of Operations Management · 2025-05-06 · 7 citations

  articleSenior author

  ABSTRACT The concept of “chained vulnerability” addresses the cyberattack risks for organizations through interconnected internal and external actors (e.g., employees and suppliers). As organizational defenses and tactics of antagonistic actors (e.g., hackers) adapt to emerging conditions, certain actors of organizations become compromised as entry points into the targeted organizations. A disruption (i.e., COVID‐19) induces operational changes (i.e., digital transformation), and we study the co‐evolution of attacks and defenses as if the antagonistic actors, organizations, and their internal and external actors are engaged in a dance together. Building on routine activity theory, our study theorizes the adaptive target suitability where the properties of actors, the types of actors involved, and the consequential phases co‐evolve following the disruption. We leverage the COVID‐19 pandemic as the empirical context and use a novel dataset of 3497 publicly reported cyber breaches. Analyses reveal that cyberattacks initially focused on internal actors (i.e., deception‐based attacks on employees) and then shifted to external actors (i.e., system vulnerability‐based attacks on digital infrastructure providers and product suppliers). Semi‐structured interviews with experts (e.g., hackers and cybersecurity managers) and subsequent econometric analyses elucidate how strategic interactions between dance partners lead to disruptions that dynamically reshape the landscape of chained vulnerability.

  PublisherDOI

• A Punctuated Equilibrium Model of Supply Chain Recovery and Resilience: After a Complete Shutdown

  Journal of Supply Chain Management · 2025-03-12 · 10 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  ABSTRACT This article investigates supply chain recovery and resilience by examining how an automotive supply chain in Wuhan was revived after a complete shutdown. The focus is on the recovery process once the supply chain was reactivated. Using punctuated equilibrium theory (PET), the authors illustrate how such a complete shutdown triggers the reconfiguration of deep structures (i.e., durable organizational aspects, such as routines) and accelerates supply chain recovery. Analyzing data from a three‐tier supply chain, the article shows how deep structure changes can produce spillover effects in attaining the “new normal” equilibrium. The findings highlight five critical deep structure elements—workforce resilience, middle‐management empowerment, process digitalization, supply chain rapport, and public partnership—that underpin recovery and resilience. These elements are grouped into two themes: internal capabilities and external relationships. The reconfiguration of these elements facilitates the supply chain's rapid recovery, with newly acquired internal capabilities more likely to be sustained than external relationships in the new equilibrium. The findings further indicate that both the supply chain role and the severity of the disruption shape the extent of deep structure reconfiguration and the pace of recovery. Overall, this article extends PET to the supply chain context, offering a novel perspective on rapid supply chain recovery and resilience.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Theorizing the governance of direct and indirect transactions in multi‐tier supply chains

  Journal of Supply Chain Management · 2024-03-27 · 15 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract An outsourcing decision does not equate to the outsourcing of a sourcing decision. Many indirect transactions with lower tier suppliers are embedded in transactions with first‐tier suppliers. Building on the identification of a transaction as the fundamental unit of analysis, this study proposes that transactions comprise bundles of intertwined direct transactions at the firm level and indirect transactions at the supply chain level. These indirect transactions require separate but not independent sourcing decisions. Using a buyer's decision to control or delegate the governance of indirect transactions for an externally sourced product, this study demonstrates that disaggregating the transaction advances theory by extending the range of outcomes, refining the calculus of the make‐or‐buy decision, and providing a coherent theoretical framework for multi‐tier supply chain management. This study considers the theoretical, managerial, and societal implications across various contingencies involving inter‐firm relationships.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Social Ties among Fundraisers and Crowdfunding Performance: The Impact of Tie Strength and Network Closure

  Journal of Management Information Systems · 2024-01-02 · 8 citations

  articleSenior author

  This study examines how the strength of social ties between focal and peer fundraisers interacts with the network structure generated by these social ties to determine crowdfunding performance. With relationship intensity and preference similarity between focal and peer fundraisers as the two dimensions of tie strength, our study discloses how the benefits and costs associated with these tie strength dimensions are affected by network closure, the degree to which peer fundraisers are connected to each other. Our estimation results indicate that (1) relationship intensity and preference similarity exhibit inverted U-shaped relationships with crowdfunding performance, and (2) network closure attenuates the effectiveness of tie strength dimensions. Together, our study findings reveal an important interplay between indirect and direct social ties. In essence, social ties among peer fundraisers facilitate a group identity that reduces the returns of time and resources a fundraiser spends on strengthening ties with these peer fundraisers.

  PublisherDOI

• Digitization and the Evolution of Buyer-Supplier Relationships

  Management and business review. · 2024-12-01 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Thomas Y Choi, Luitzen de Boer, and Poul Houman Andersen discuss how supply chain managers have historically addressed relationships between buyer and supplier and how digitization will help them to adjust to new realities driven by global disruptions, political conflicts, and climate change.

  PublisherDOI

• Dyads in Supply Networks

  2023-08-24

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract When two companies engage in business as a buyer and a supplier, they form a buyer-supplier relationship. That is a dyad—two entities linked up in a relationship. Examining how suppliers are embedded in their extended ties, we discover the duality of buyer-supplier relationships; for instance, a deep buyer-supplier relationship offers stability but also poses rigidity. We consider another form of a dyad in supplier-supplier relationships. The relationship between suppliers matters because sometimes the buyer would want the suppliers to work together, as in a new product development project; other times, the buyer would not want the suppliers to even talk to each other, especially when they are bidding on the same contract. These relationships between suppliers, in general, operate in varying degrees of co-opetition involving cooperation and competition.

  PublisherDOI

• Epilogue

  2023-08-24

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract As supply chain professionals, we move goods and services to where they are needed. We bring happiness. Conceptually, there is happiness with the lowercase “h” and another with the uppercase “H.” The lowercase “happiness” is what we all seek as individuals. As we seek our happiness, we discover our states of individual happiness are interdependent. When many happinesses at the individual-node level are interdependent, they lead to a rugged landscape. We can only find small hills. Happiness with an upper case “H” would be equivalent to finding a single, tall peak. We can have as our collective goal a world at peace, a world devoid of sicknesses, and a world with no global warming, all worthy goals, but these are elusive goals. This Happiness is not a controlled state that can be attained by planning and execution but an emergent state that needs to be allowed to unfold over time. From our end, we just have to better control the interdependencies among happinesses at the individual company level.

  PublisherDOI

• Extended Supply Chains

  2023-08-24

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract The tendency of focal companies is to seek solutions to their problems at their immediate suppliers. However, the source of their problems may arise from deeper in their supply chains. This realization places importance on considering extended supply chains and necessitates a multi-tier supply chain perspective. At the functional level, a focal company may consider directly sourcing from important lower tier suppliers. As a focal company engages in directed sourcing, it is, in fact, making its supply chain. As such, we discuss supply chain make versus supply chain buy. We also consider how supply chains may be theorized using network concepts involving institutional theories, supply chain financing, and cyber security.

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Scalable Enterprise Systems: Control Versus Emergence

  NSF · $197k · 2000–2002

Frequent coauthors

• Manus Rungtusanatham

  University of Cincinnati

  17 shared

• Yusoon Kim

  Oregon State University

  14 shared

• Dale S. Rogers

  American Association of Kidney Patients

  11 shared

• Zhaohui Wu

  Oregon State University

  11 shared

• Ángel Rafael Martínez Lorente

  Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena

  10 shared

• Jeffrey Κ. Liker

  10 shared

• José Antonio Martínez García

  Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria La Fe

  9 shared

• Verónica H. Villena

  Arizona State University

  8 shared

Labs

• Thomas Choi LabPI

Education

• Ph.D.

  University of Michigan

  1992

• B.A.

  University of California-Berkeley

  1980

Awards & honors

• 2012 Distinguished Operations Management Scholar by the OM D…