Research

My research focuses on the role of abductive thinking, scientific reasoning and knowledgeable imitation for solving decision problems of high complexity, typical for modern-day organizational environments. It also investigates the role of understanding others' ideas, judgments, and decisions in this process. It starts from Herbert A. Simon’s concepts of bounded and procedural rationality. Jointly with George Polyà, Herbert A. Simon emphasized the role of heuristics in human decision making processes. Both Simon himself and research that he inspired in cognitive science has focused on the role of cognitive representations in tackling complex problems. In my work that I began with Reinhard Selten in 2004, the overarching question has been how new representations come into being.

To address this question, I co-designed and implemented several experimental designs that allow reconstructing cognitive representations from recorded sequences of actions and information queries. Our experiments revealed that participants are able to devise decision procedures (involving mental simulation or real-world experimentation) which, without internalizing the criteria of full rationality (such as backward induction), often proved capable of approximating fully rational outcomes. Moreover, decisions can be improved—without paternalizing decision makers—through decision elicitation formats that help them form appropriate cognitive representations. For a representative study, see

Designing for deliberative goal-based decision making in environments with rare adverse events. Organization Science 27(6):1417–1434

The second research thread that I have been pursuing is the emergence of macro-level economic and cognitive patterns that are not inherent in individual preferences or traits. Rather, these patterns are shaped by the structure of interactions between the constituents of a system. My work in this field has been based on Monte-Carlo simulations. A representative study is

A percolation-based model explaining delayed takeoff in new-product diffusion. Industrial and Corporate Change 17 (5): 1001–1017

My current experimental research connects these two threads by investigating how individuals collaboratively make sense of and jointly enact economic realities at the organizational and societal level through forming cognitive representations and deriving rules of behavior on their basis. For a representative study, see

Effects of Social Information on Risk Taking and Performance: Understanding Others’ Decisions vs. Comparing Oneself with Others in Short-Term Performance. Organization Science (Forthcoming)