Decision Making

Name of the Faculty: Kanchan Mukherjee

Designation: Professor

Teaching Area:
(such as Finance & Accounting; Marketing; Production &
Operations Management; Strategy)
OBHRM

This course may be offered to:

(PG Programmes / Doctoral Programme)
http://www.iimb.ernet.in/programmes
All PG programs

Credits (No. of hours):

(3 credits=30 classroom hours; 1.5 credits-15 classroom hours;
3 (30 hours)
session=90 minutes)

Term / Quarter: <To be decided by the Area and based on faculty

(Starting April /June /September/December) availability>

Course Type: Elective

(Core or Elective)
Regular course
Offered as:
(Regular Course: staggered across the term or
Workshop1 Course: 3-5 continuous days)
Grading Norms
Standard (On a scale of 1 to 4) OR On a scale of 1 to 4
Qualitative (Excellent, Good, Satisfactory and Unsatisfactory)
Are there any financial implications to this
None
course, apart from the allocated budget?

1
Workshop course: Please provide reasons as to why the course is being offered in workshop mode and why it cannot be offered
as a regular course (that is spread over 5-10 weeks). As an institution, IIMB prefers courses offered in the regular mode, since it
results in better learning experience for the students and avoids overlapping of courses. Not more than 15 hours will be
scheduled for a workshop course conducted on campus during workshop week.

Degree Granting Programmes: Template for proposing new course outlines_v2020_Internal

Course Summary
Decision making lies at the heart of our professional (and personal) lives. It is the quality of
decisions that make or break leaders. Today, institutional leaders are confronted with increasingly
complex, volatile and uncertain environments, placing a demand for exceptional leadership and
decision making skills. It is no longer enough to simply use traditional theories and frameworks to
guide your decision making as they do not seem to provide all the answers. An indispensable
element in an organization’s success is the leaders’ ability to make the right judgments and right
choices in highly nebulous circumstances. The goal of this course is to deepen and broaden your
decision making skills and enhance your internal mental capabilities by equipping you with the
latest concepts drawn from the fields of decision analysis, cognitive psychology, behavioral
economics and management science.
2
Pre-requisites, if any: None

Learning Objectives / Outcomes

The goal of this course is to transform the way you think, by bringing to you some of the latest
research in the cognitive and decision sciences. Over the course of our discussions, you will:

1. Get introduced to the normative, descriptive and prescriptive models, tools and techniques of
decision making;

2. Understand the key elements of the human mind that profoundly affect the way we perceive
and interact with the world;

3. Realize how hidden psychological and sociological factors can be as important for success as
rational or measureable factors;

4. Get deeper analytical and behavioral insights into the concepts of risk, risk perception and risk
attitudes and ways to navigate in an increasingly uncertain world; and

5. With practice, grow into a better decision maker and enhance your organization’s (as well as
personal) effectiveness.

2
Pre-requisite: Please define the pre-requisite core and/or elective courses to ensure registered students meet the
basic knowledge for this course. Please note that the elective courses are open across PGP, EPGP, PGPEM and PGPPM
and international exchange students. Multiple sections will be opened based on the students’ demand and
availability of teaching faculty.

Degree Granting Programmes: Template for proposing new course outlines_v2020_Internal

Pedagogy
I shall introduce the chief concepts and ideas in the course through interactive lectures and videos
where I resort to many examples to illustrate the use and importance of the ideas we discuss. We
shall not restrict ourselves to any prescribed textbook. Instead we shall add value by bringing
cutting edge research into the classroom. We will be discussing several decision problems and
thought experiments during the course. You are encouraged to approach each session with an open
mind, constantly question your assumptions and adopt a rigorous mode of thinking. We shall
discuss several decision problems which will help you to appreciate the complexities involved in
integrating large amounts of information for real life decision making.

Course Evaluation & Grading

1. Group Project 30%

2. In-class quizzes (Individual) 20%

3. End-term exam (Individual) 40%

4. Class participation & presentations 10%

Group project: Groups will be formed randomly at the beginning of the course. In the project, you
will be encouraged to come up with challenging problem statements and solve them with rigorous
data collection and analyses. The data can be from primary or secondary sources. All groups will
make formal presentations of their projects in the last 2 sessions in which other students are
encouraged to ask questions and critically examine the project findings. The goal of the project
exercise is to help you to think about how to frame relevant and interesting questions that could
potentially add value to your organizations, markets, governments or society at large. The desired
perspective is to view the project not as an end to complete the course requirements but as the
beginning of a new and exciting intellectual journey. Further details about the project logistics will
be discussed in class.

In-class quizzes: There shall be 3 in class quizzes of 10-15 min each. The questions will be
objective type, such as multiple choice, true/false, fill-in-the-blanks, short answers, etc. which will
be designed to make you think. Further details will be discussed in class.

Degree Granting Programmes: Template for proposing new course outlines_v2020_Internal

End term exam: The end-term exam will be structured like the quizzes but will be longer in
duration.

Class participation & presentations: Credit for class participation will be based on the quality
(rather than quantity) of comments made in class. Groups will be called upon to make short (5-10
min) presentations of the readings in class. The goal is to give you practice in delivering concept
based material to a peer audience.

Degree Granting Programmes: Template for proposing new course outlines_v2020_Internal

Session-wise plan
3 credits=20 sessions, 90 minutes each; 1.5 credits=10 sessions, 90 minutes each (excludes time involved in conducting quizzes of more
than 30 mins duration and examinations).

Sessions
Topic

Introduction & overview:

1 Buchanan, L. & O’Connell, A. (2006). A Brief History of Decision Making.
Harvard Business Review.
Foundations of decision making:
2 Paul Schoemaker &Edward Russo (1995). A Pyramid of Decision Approaches.
California Management Review.

Tools and frameworks

Decision making under risk & uncertainty:

3 Robinson, D. (2007). A Primer on the Management of Risk and Uncertainty.
Rotman Management Magazine.
The gambling paradigm and decision trees:
4
Case Study: Freemark Abbey Winery. Harvard Business School.
Scenario planning:
5 Schoemaker, Paul J.H. (1995). Scenario Planning: A Tool for Strategic Thinking.
MIT Sloan Management Review.
Multi-criteria decision making:
6 Hammond, J.S., Keeney, R. L., & Raiffa, H. (1998). Even swaps: A rational
method for making trade-offs. Harvard Business Review.
The experimental paradigm in decision making:
7 Davenport (2009). How to design smart business experiments. Harvard
Business Review.

Psychology of decision making

Models of bounded rationality:

8 Kahneman D. (2002). Maps of bounded rationality: A perspective on intuitive
judgment and choice. Nobel Prize Lecture.
Heuristics & biases:
9 Tversky, A., & Kahneman D. (1974) Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and
biases, Science, 185, 1124-1131.
Intuition:
10 Case study: Intuitive Decision Making under Uncertainty: Risk Preferences and the
Role of Intuition. Harvard Business School.

Degree Granting Programmes: Template for proposing new course outlines_v2020_Internal

 Debiasing 1:
Bias buster 1: Taking the “outside view”. McKinsey Quarterly.
11 Bias buster 2: Pruning projects proactively. McKinsey Quarterly.
Bias buster 3: Resisting the allure of “glamour” projects. McKinsey Quarterly.
Bias buster 4: Being objective about budgets. McKinsey Quarterly.
Debiasing 2:
Bias buster 5: Pre-mortems: Being smart at the start. McKinsey Quarterly.
12 Bias buster 6: Upfront contingency planning. McKinsey Quarterly.
Bias buster 7: Getting both sides of the story. McKinsey Quarterly.
Bias buster 8: Avoiding snap judgments. McKinsey Quarterly.
Subjective beliefs and judgments: Wisdom of the crowds
13 DeWees, B. & Winson, J.A. (2018). The Right Way to Use the Wisdom of
Crowds. Harvard Business Review.
Subjective beliefs and judgments: Behavioral forecasting
14 Paul Schoemaker & Tetlock, P.E. (2016). Superforecasting: How to Upgrade
Your Company’s Judgment. Harvard Business Review.

Applied topics

Fairness & ethics in decision making:

15 Max Bazerman & Don Moore. Judgment & Decision Making, 7 th Edition, John
Wiley & Sons, Inc. Chapter 7: Fairness and Ethics in Decision Making.
Judgment & decision making at work – employee selection & appraisal:
16 S. Highhouse, R.S. Dalal, & E. Salas (Eds.). Judgment and Decision Making at
Work. Routledge, NY & London. Chapters 2 & 4.
Decision making & public policy – poverty, climate change:
17 World Bank (2015). World Development Report: Mind, Society & Behavior.
Chapters 4 & 9.

18 Guest lecture

19-20 Group presentations

Degree Granting Programmes: Template for proposing new course outlines_v2020_Internal