PB453      Half Unit
Corporate Behaviour and Decision Making

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

Course Convenor

Availability

Requisites

Mutually exclusive courses:

This course cannot be taken with PB4D5 at any time on the same degree programme.

This course delivers insights from cutting edge research in behavioural science, psychology, economics, and management and guides students in their application to decision making within corporate companies in high stake settings.   The course covers search and hiring, circumventing groupthink, compensation and promotions decisions, the role of bias in equity markets, skills and the future of work, C-Suite decision making, conduct and motivating workers. Real world class case studies are used during the course to reinforce lessons learned, and allow students visualise scenarios in which the theory and insights covered in the course can be applied.

The assessment is designed to give students the opportunity to apply the theory and insights they learned on the course to a real-world case study.

16 hours of seminars and 4 hours of lectures in the Winter Term.

This course provides 20 hours of combined lectures and seminars in the WT.

Students will be expected to produce 1 case study in the WT.

Case study with short questions that matches the style of the summative assessment.

Bertrand Marrianne and Duflo Ester. Field Experiments on Discrimination. in Handbook of Economic Field Experiments. Volume 1, pages 309 - 393 2017.

Bono, J. E., Foldes, H. J., Vinson, G., & Muros, J. P. (2007). Workplace emotions: The role of supervision and leadership. Journal of applied Psychology, 92(5), 1357.

Gneezy, Uri, Kenneth L. Leonard, and John A. List. "Gender differences in competition: Evidence from a matrilineal and a patriarchal society." Econometrica 77.5 (2009): 1637-1664.

Guenther, Benno and Lordan, Grace (2023) When the disposition effect proves to be rational: experimental evidence from professional traders. Frontiers in Psychology, 14. ISSN 1664-1078

Herring, C. (2009). Does diversity pay?: Race, gender, and the business case for diversity. American sociological review,74(2), 208-224.

Johnston, David W. and Lordan, Grace (2016) Racial prejudice and labour market penalties during economic downturns European Economic Review, 84. 57-75

Josten C, Lordan G (2022) Automation and the changing nature of work. PLoS ONE 17(5): e0266326. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0266326

Kandasamy, Narayanan, et al. "Cortisol shifts financial risk preferences." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111.9 (2014): 3608-3613.

Riordan, D., & Riordan, M. (2013). Guarding against groupthink in the professional work environment: a checklist. Journal of Academic and Business Ethics, 7, 1.

Presentation (10%)

This component of assessment includes an element of group work.

Presentation (40%)

Essay (50%)

The presentation (10%) is a case study group presentation. 

The essay (50%) is a written assessment that is linked to the online presentation. 

The presentation (40%) is an online presentation of the written assessment with Q&A.