Insegnamento a.a. 2019-2020

• Foundations of decision making. How to frame problems and objectives. Improving heuristics  for judgement under uncertainty. Alternative decision strategies and their selection.
• When to employ decision teams. Governing team decision making dynamics.
• When to negotiate. Types of conflict of interests and negotiation structures. Types of negotiation strategies. How to improve agreements.
• Power and fairness in negotiations.
• Organizational cultures in negotiations.
• Multi-party negotiations and coalition analysis.

• Distinguish effective and ineffective heuristics for decision making.
• Select a decision strategy appropriate to a problem.
• Recognize different game and negotiation structures.
• Select negotiation strategies appropriate to the negotiation structure.

• Develop personal skills in problem solving and negotiating.
• Evaluate strategies and behavior applied by other actors.
• Diagnose the key features and address the challenges of decision and negotiation situations.
• Devise appropriate behaviors and design superior solutions and agreements.

• Face-to-face lectures
• Guest speaker's talks (in class or in distance)
• Exercises (exercises, database, software etc.)
• Case studies /Incidents (traditional, online)
• Individual assignments
• Group assignments
• Interactive class activities (role playing, business game, simulation, online forum, instant polls)

Each session includes an experiment or simulation in which to experiment the strategies and behaviors topic of the session. Conceptualizations and models are reconstructed on the basis of the analysis of the empirical evidence generated by the experiments conducted in class, connected and compared with the available results of  social science research on those behaviors.  Real-life wrap up case studies are discussed as for each part of the course.

Attendance is useful to learn personal skills in simulations and exercises; and to develop application capacities to real situations through case analysis (in particular participation in ‘wrap-up’ case discussions is preparing to do a good final field mini project).

Attendance is incentivized, not controlled. Hence there is no formal status as an attending or non attending student.

Rather, the student can choose a mode of evaluation in the following menu, according to his/her possibility of attendance and point record obtained during the course.

Written assignments (16 points/30: about 50%)

- Option a) : Written case analyses during the course: 8 points can be gained in each of the wrap up sessions by delivering an individual take home analysis of the case (up to 6 points), and participating to a teamwork in class (up to 2 points).

- Option b): Written individual test in official exam sessions: A written test with open questions on core concepts (no multiple choice) covered in the course and highlighted in the slides. The test can be taken in any official exam date.

Field mini project (14 points/30: about 50%):

A field mini project, conducted individually or in teams of maximum 3 members, analyzing a real case of decision and/or negotiation (through interviews, or documental sources as journal reports, books, movies etc; or even personal experiences) with the tools learned.

- Option a) Team projects: This option is directed to students normally attending the course. The analysis should be summarized on slides (max 5) and be ready for presentation in the final sessions of the course in May. The points will be the same for all members.

- Option b) Individual projects: This option is thought for students who cannot attend the course or cannot work in team with other students. If the project is conducted individually, it is not presented in class but delivered in a report of 5 pages max including references (1.5 spaced, 12 font). The report should be handed in, printed, in the session in which the student is taking the exam.

Class participation (additional 3 points) : Up to maximum further 3 points can be gained through active and well prepared class participation in the discussion of cases and simulations. 1 of those points can be gained competitively (doing better than the average of other teams in the same role) in the ‘Grand Game’ of March 30.

In case the final score exceeds 30 points (31-33), it will be registered as 30 cum laude.

Selected  Chapters  (as indicated in the course Syllabus and Available on Library Course Reserve) from:

• A. GRANDORI, Organization and Economic Behaviour, Routledge 2001.
• L.L. THOMPSON, The mind and heart of the negotiator, Upper Saddle River, NJ, Prentice-Hall 2004.
• H. RAIFFA, The art and science of negotiation, HBS Press, 1992.
• Course Slides (posted).