Course 2023-2024 a.y.

• Foundations of decision making. How to frame problems and objectives. Improving 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 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 on campus/online (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 for each part of the course.

The course is in presence, but it will be possible to connect from outside in a synchronous mode (listening at registrations after class will be ineffective due to many exercises and simulations that cannot be registered).

Evaluation – Attending mode

There is no ‘status’ of attending student, but an attending ‘grade’ that is formed during the course, through points gained through the following assignments:

- Case analysis Assignments - Written wrap up case analyses

- Class participation

- Field projects: A field project, conducted 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;) with the tools learned. 

All team members have to present and ‘defend’ their project orally in one of the last sessions of the course. The written report has to be delivered as a BB assignment.

- A final +1 point for outstanding contributions during the whole course may be added at the end. If the points cumulated during the course were already 30, this would bring to a 30 cum laude.

Students can opt out from the attending mode of evaluation and turn to a non attending mode during the course, until the formation of teams for the project work. During project work students should maintain the commitment towards other team members and cannot opt out. Once the project is completed, any student can eventually opt for a non attending individual evaluation mode, if not satisfied with the team output.

Evaluation – Non Attending mode

- Written in-class test based on the adopted material (4/5 open questions and a brief case analysis).

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.
• Course Slides (posted).