Psychological methods and theories to understand organizational decision makers. Introduction of key psychological concepts such as bounded rationality/ethicality, cognitive dissonance. Discussion of the role of inter-individual differences, multi-level perspectives and multidisciplinary methods (e.g., lab, field & survey experiments, process tracing)

Your ability to generate insights about organizations, industries and societies is often linked with your understanding of decision making processes of individual actors and their interplay with other (groups of) actors. This course will introduce you to psychological methods and theories you can use to understand organizational decision makers, inter-individual heterogeneity of personalities and cognitive abilities, and subsequently help to evaluate and predict organizational development. You will be introduced to key psychological concepts such as bounded rationality/ethicality, cognitive dissonance, inter-individual differences, multi-level perspectives and a set of multidisciplinary methods (e.g., lab, field & survey experiments, process tracing), and apply them to your specific research question.

For this lecture participation is obligatory. Students are allowed to miss a maximum of 20%

Introduction of core concepts and corresponding operationalisation through presentation and discussion. Development of first research ideas within small groups. Preparation and presentation of design ideas by individual student, peer-to-peer feedback

Development of a research design for an empirical study and a respective pre-registration