Decision Making & Negotiations

Despite the importance of self-awareness for managerial success, many organizational members hold overly optimistic views of their expertise and performance — a phenomenon particularly prevalent among those least skilled in a given domain. We examined whether this same pattern extends to appraisals of emotional intelligence (EI), a critical managerial competency. We also examined why this overoptimism tends to survive explicit feedback about performance. Across 3 studies involving professional students, we found that the least skilled had limited insight into deficits in their performance.

This research examines how consumers choose retailers when they are uncertain about store prices prior to shopping. Simulating everyday choice, participants made successive retailer choices where on each occasion they chose a retailer and only then learned product prices. The results of a series of studies demonstrated that participants were more likely to choose a retailer that offered an everyday low pricing strategy (EDLP) or that offered frequent small discounts over a retailer that offered infrequent large discounts.

The case describes the launch of a social media platform by the largest container shipping company in the world. Students will have the opportunity to thoroughly evaluate the campaign, which by observable criteria, has done extremely well. The case provides details on the various platforms used, the nature of content provided on each, and the associated budgets (including headcount). The budget figures are particularly interesting because they permit a rich discussion around the social media program's ROI.

Substitution decisions have been examined from a variety of perspectives. The economics literature measures cross-price elasticity, operations research models optimal assortments, the psychology literature studies goals in conflict, and marketing research has examined substitution-in-use, brand switching, stockouts, and self-control. We integrate these perspectives into a common framework for understanding consumer substitution decisions; their specific drivers (availability of new alternatives, internal vs.

Marketing variables that are included in consumer discrete choice models are often endogenous. Extant treatments using likelihood-based estimators impose parametric distributional assumptions, such as normality, on the source of endogeneity. These assumptions are restrictive because misspecified distributions have an impact on parameter estimates and associated elasticities. The normality assumption for endogeneity can be inconsistent with some marginal cost specifications given a price-setting process, although they are consistent with other specifications.

There are obvious economic predictors of ability and willingness to invest in environmental sustainability. Yet, given that environmental decisions represent trade-offs between present sacrifices and uncertain future benefits, psychological factors may also play a role in country-level environmental behavior. Gott's principle suggests that citizens may use perceptions of their country's age to predict its future continuation, with longer pasts predicting longer futures.

A recent surge of research has investigated the potential of pro-environmental behavior interventions to affect other pro-environmental behaviors not initially targeted by the intervention. The evidence evaluating these spillover effects has been mixed, with some studies finding evidence for positive spillover (i.e., one pro-environmental behavior increases the likelihood of performing additional pro-environmental behaviors) and others finding negative spillover (i.e., one pro-environmental behavior decreases the likelihood of additional pro-environmental behaviors).

Why are banking systems unstable in so many countries—but not in others? The United States has had twelve systemic banking crises since 1840, while Canada has had none. The banking systems of Mexico and Brazil have not only been crisis prone but have provided minuscule amounts of credit to business enterprises and households.

At the time of its launch, Contently was a digital marketplace, where small businesses, agencies, and corporations could search for writers. But recent financial results showed that Contently earned substantially more profit from its Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) business than from its writers' commissions. This case — which includes background on the evolution of content marketing, information on the SaaS industry, as well as data on Contently's financial performance — asks students to evaluate Contently's best path to profitable growth.