Courses
Business Management
BMGT808T Survey of Consumer Behavior (A. Kirmani)
The major objective of this course is to provide doctoral level coverage of research that has emerged from psychological approaches to consumer behavior. Among the issues discussed are how people attend to information, how such information is related to prior knowledge, how knowledge guides judgements, how people form inferences and attitudes, and how people respond to persuasion.
BMGT808Y Seminar on Behavioral Research in Marketing (J. Srivastava)
This course provides participants with a broad exposure to research pertinent to consumer and managerial decision making in marketing. The framework used is grounded in behavioral decision research.
BMGT808W Experimental Methods for Behavioral Research (R. Hamilton)
In this course, students will learn how to conduct and evaluate experimental research in marketing. In addition to reading method papers, students will read empirical papers and design empirical studies. Reading empirical papers from top marketing and psychology journals will build familiarity with the research methods discussed in class by providing examples of their use. Designing empirical studies will provide students with an opportunity to practice some of the methods applicable to their own research interests. Over the course of the semester, there will be discussion on research design, experimental manipulations, measuring process and outcome variables, moderation and mediation, ruling out alternative explanations for observed effects, external validity, analysis of both quantitative and qualitative data and meta-analysis. Course assignments will provide practice conducting data analysis and writing journal reviews, and the empirical research project will lead students step-by-step through the process of designing a marketing experiment.
BMGT808D Seminar in Decision Making (C. Stevens)
This course is designed to help you become an independent scholar knowledgeable in judgement and decision making processes. The course is research-based and covers the theoretical and empirical literatures on judgement and decision making at three levels of analysis: individual, group and organizational. The goals of the course are to increase knowledge of theory and research in judgement and decision making, to develop analytic and research skills, and improve presentation, writing and critical analysis skills.
BMGT808I Social and Behavior Research in Information Systems (K. Stewart)
The course objective is to introduce participants to some major streams of social and behavioral research in information systems and to help students understand the role of research in an academic community and methods of social science research.
BMGT808X Advanced Analytical Methods in Management (G.Chen)
The goals of this course are threefold: (1) to provide an overview of basic and advanced research method tools for conducting single- and multi-level research on organizational phenomena; (2) to develop critical skills needed to plan for and evaluate empirical organizational research; and (3) to develop skills of actually using various organizational research methods. Most importantly, this course willt each students to think about theories in their content domain, research methods and design, and statistics as three inter-related components of a unified system through which theories are developed, tested, and refined. Simply put, theoretical and methodological competencies are not and should not be, mutually exclusive. In line with its goals, the course will cover three main topics. First, it will cover tests of moderated and mediated regression models, which served as the key analytical tools for testing the vast majority of (if not all) theories in the organizational sciences. Second, it will discuss factor analytical techniques that integrate measurement and structural properties of theory testing, including exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses and structural equation modeling. Finally, realizing that organizational phonemena occur in multilevel, open systems, we will spend the latter half of the course on multilevel theory, methods, and techniques. Collectively, this course will provide students with broad overview of developing and testing multilevel theories of organization.
BMGT880 Seminar on Research Methods (K. Bartol)
his doctoral seminar on research methods is designed to prepare students to undertake original streams of research in management (mainly organizational behavior and human resource management). Students will learn to apply principles from all stages of the scientific process. The process is represented by the cycle: Theory Hypotheses Data Verification.
BMGT808Q Managing Conflict (D. Shapiro)
In this doctoral seminar we will illuminate the large breadth of issues associated with "managing conflict" in organizations and, in so doing, alert class participants to why the descriptor "managing conflict" is deceivingly narrow in scope. A more accurate descriptor is perhaps "the dark side" of organizations since the phenomena that we will be reading about, discussing, and writing theory-based papers on pertain to the various types of conflict that employees/managers typically encounter in organizations, such as task-conflict, relationship-conflict, and role-conflict (including, but not limited to, work-family balance conflict). The antecedents and consequences of perceptions of organizational (in) justice. Strategies for managing perceptions of organizational injustice and for managing conflict in general (such as explanations, apologies, arbitration, mediation, negotiation). The effects of (functional and cultural) diversity in teams and how to manage the potentially destructive effects of team-diversity. The potentially "dark side" of positive leader-characteristics, such as ability, charisma, and LMX, to "blind" followers from punitively evaluating leaders for behaving unethically. And lastly, the social influences in organizations on employees' choices to behave in more versus less organizationally-desirable ways, including (but not limited to) more versus less ethical ways.
BMGT808F Doctoral Seminar: Cognitive Approaches to Strategy (R. Reger)
The objective of this course is to introduce students to the interpretative approach to strategy (Porac, Thomas & Baden-Fuller, 1989) and to provide students with the opportunity to learn foundational and current work by the foremost scholars working in the areas of institutional and cognitive approaches to strategy. The interpretative approach focuses on how market participants interpret information, how their interpretations affect actions, and how actions generate market outcomes. Thus, the interpretative approach enables researchers to study simultaneously micro-level issues related to individual socio-cognitive processes, and macro-level issues related to organizational and market processes. The interpretative approach is an emergent paradigm with an eclectic disciplinary base derived primarily from social cognition and institutional theory. Thus, this course emphasizes diversity in perspectives, evolution of ideas, and developing new ways of thinking about the central problems of strategy.
BMGT808K Research Methods in Strategic Management (D. Waguespack)
Strategy is an interdisciplinary topic, so we will draw broadly on the social sciences, but then pay particular attention to current methodological issues in the field. I believe that you, as an expert producer and consumer of social science research, should ask three basic questions about any academic research product (including your own):
1) Is the research question interesting?
2) Is the research design valid?
3) Is the test data meaningful?
BMGT845 The Interaction of Finance and Industrial Organization (G. Phillips)
The primary topics of the course concern the interaction between the firm’s real decisions and its financial decisions in different equilibrium industrial organization settings. This course involves a fair amount of microeconomics and industrial organization in addition to the finance. Both theoretical articles and empirical articles will be covered and discusses. The emphasis will be the link between theoretical and empirical research in both industrial organization and corporate finance.
BMGT808/AMSC698 Research Seminar on Pricing, Optimization and Data Mining (W. Elmaghraby)
Despite the increase in the number of companies and organizations that invest in decision support tools in sales, marketing, operations, and especially in pricing and revenue management, there is very little research on how these tools influence human decision making. Ideally, one would like human judgement to complement the decision support tools and their inherent shortcomings (such as model abstraction, model bias and forecasting errors) to produce superior results. This research seminar will investigate statistical models and methods to analyze pricing data, analyze sales people decision making, develop statistically significant beliefs of sales people using pricing information, and investigate methods suitable to understand how sales people behave with or without recommendations from decision support tools.
Economics
ECON 635 Experimental Economics (E. Ozbay)
An introduction to the methodology of laboratory and field experiments in economics by concentrating on series of experiments to see how experiments build on one another and allow researchers with different theoretical dispositions to narrow the range of potential disagreement.
ECON 868 Workshop in Microeconomic Theory and Industrial Organization.
The Workshop in Microeconomic Theory and Industrial Organization presents important new research in these areas. There is a particular emphasis on game theory, information economics, experimental economics, antitrust issues and empirical industrial organization. Leading academics in addition to officials from the Federal Trade Commission, Justice Department, and other federal agencies visit regularly. Participating faculty include Lawrence Ausubel, Roger Betancourt, Peter Cramton, Ginger Jin, Emel Filiz Ozbay, Erkut Ozbay, and Daniel Vincent.
ECON 603 Microeconomic Analysis I (E. Filiz-Ozbay and L. Ausubel)
First half of the course covers consumer theory, theory of the firm under perfect competition, monopoly and price discrimination. Second half is an introduction to non-cooperative game theory, including static and dynamic games, and games of complete and incomplete information.
ECON604 Microeconomic Analysis II (E. Ozbay and D. Vincent)
This course covers markets and market equilibria. It examines decision making under uncertainty and the economics of markets with complete, incomplete, and asymmetric information.
ECON 661 The Corporate Firm [E. Filiz-Ozbay]
It studies models of firm behavior and the theories of the firm. Topics include product choice and quality, advertising, manufacturer-retailer relations, manufacturer-supplier relations, vertical integration, incomplete contracts and their foundations, and alternative industrial structures when relational contracts are used.
ECON 703 Advanced Microeconomics I (P. Cramton)
Formal treatment of game theory and its microeconomic applications are presented in this course, emphasizing dynamics and information. Equilibrium concepts for static and dynamic games, and games with complete and incomplete information, are studied. Topics also discussed include: mechanism design, efficiency, reputations,signaling, and screening.
Psychology
PSYC 601 Quantitative Methods I
A basic course in quantitative/mathematical analysis and statistical methods in psychology with an emphasis on conceptual understanding. Topics include issues in measurement, probability theory, statistical inference and hypothesis testing, parameter estimation, bivariate regression, and correlation.
PSYC 602 Quantitative Methods II
A continuation of PSYC 601. Topics include experimental design, analysis of variance, analysis of covariance, multiple regression, and general linear models.
PSYC 603 Introduction to Industrial and Organizational Psychology
Advanced survey of industrial-organizational psychology, including selection, training, motivation, group processes, leadership, organizational psychology, and organizational theory. Readings stressed and seminar time will be used for lectures, discussion and integration of the reading materials.
PSYC 604 Fundamentals of Social Psychology (3 credits)
A survey of classic and contemporary theories.
PSYC 607 Advanced Topics in Human-Learning and Cognitive Psychology
A systemic review of major topic areas in the field of human learning and cognition, with emphases on information processes, mental representations, memory, reasoning, problem solving, and language.
PSYC 705 Mathematical Models of Memory and Cognition
Topics to be covered include a review of basic probability theory; models of learning, memory and attention; stimulus sampling theory; computer simulations of cognitive processes.
PSYC 707 Theory of Decision and Choice
A study of algebraic and probabilistic models for decision and choice behavior, and related experimental procedures. Topics include: measurement of preference, subjective utility models for certain and uncertain outcomes, normative strategies, decision making styles, and group decision making.
PSYC 708 Seminar in Psychometric Theory
Study of the current practices, trends, or recent developments in psychometric theory.
PSYC 709 Seminar in Mathematical Models
Special topics in mathematical psychology. A discussion of quantitative representations of psychological processes in one or more substantive areas of psychology.
PSYC 725 Teams at Work
Theory and research regarding the formation, management, and functioning of teams in the workplace; including team composition, team rewards, team-task and team-organization relationships and fit, team productivity, and the selection for and training of teams. International use of teams at work.
PSYC 732 Selection and Classification Issues in Organizations
Theory and research regarding the formation, management, and functioning of teams in the workplace; including team composition, team rewards, team-task and team-organization relationships and fit, team productivity, and the selection for and training of teams. International use of teams at work.
PSYC 732 Selection and Classification Issues in Organizations
Consideration of societal, organizational and individual demands for appropriate use of individual differences in (primarily) initial placement of employees. Recruitment, and selection issues, the role of governmental regulations, and the role of individual factors in individual behavior are considered. Extensive coverage given to fundamental psycho-metric problems and the development of individual and organizational criteria of effectiveness.
PSYC 739 The Psychology of Workplace Change and Innovation
Organizational change and innovation research and theory, current impetuses for organizational change (e.g., economic, demographic, and technological trends) and specific workplace innovations (e.g., employee ownership, QWL, CAD/CAM, etc.)
PSYC 741 Attitude Change
A review of research and theory concerning the nature of attitudes and the determinants of attitude change.
PSYC 742 Group Processes
Research and theory concerning a) intra-group behavior, including topics such as group formation, conformity, group task performance and decision-making, minority influence, and jury decision-making, and b) inter-group behavior, including the processes of social categorization, stereotype development and change, and issues of prejudice and discrimination.
PSYC 743 Social Cognition
Research and theory concerning the attribution of personal characteristics, errors and biases in social judgment, social information processing, person memory, motivated social-cognition and cognition in groups.
PSYC 778 Seminar in Learning and Memory
An advanced topical seminar covering the areas of human learning and memory. Acquisition processes, storage and retrieval processes, and attention and information processing.