RASCH MODEL IN OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT

For decades, in the field of Operations Management, the need for a rapprochement between the academic and the professional world has been highlighted, demanding more empirical studies that provide practical solutions to practitioners. Hence, in recent years, there have been two key phenomena: the convergence of research topics and themes of interest to practitioners, and an increase in the number of empirical studies. However, another important factor when providing practical knowledge is the tool or methodology used. Therefore, the development of new tools or the application of the existing ones in other fields of research is an interesting topic. It is at this point where the Rasch methodology becomes important. This technique has been traditionally applied in disciplines such as Psychology or Medicine. However, some years ago, it has begun to be used in other areas of knowledge, including the field of Management. However, its application to the particular field of Operations is low and, therefore, the potential for development and future research are numerous. The Rasch methodology, useful for the design and use of surveys, is based on three principles (unidimensionality, additivity and invariance) and it allows to obtain objective measures based on the analysis of categorical variables. Among its many applications we highlight the following: analysis of the global feasibility and reliability of the construct, unidimensionality analysis, scale analysis of the questionnaire, ranking of the items and/or persons, SWOT analysis... It is, therefore, a very rich methodology with lots of features for application in the discipline. Due to its early development in this area of knowledge the aim of this paper is, firstly, to present Rasch methodology and, secondly, to do a bibliometric analysis (with Sitkis software) on the Rasch model applied to the field of the management. This analysis will allow us to observe the temporal evolution of the publications, to know what studies must be consulted, to meet the reference authors in the field, as well as to know the most important publications. It is considered that this work is interesting because discloses a novel methodology for its application in the area of Operations and also, it provides relevant information for those who are interested in it and want to expand their knowledge.)