Decision Science News: December 2005 Archives

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December 14, 2005

2006 Behavioral Decision Research in Management Conference

The 2006 Behavioral Decision Research in Management Conference will be hosted by the UCLA Anderson School of Management.

Local Organizing Committee

Shlomo Benartzi |Conference Coordinator
Craig Fox | Program Chair
Kristin Diehl | USC
Sanjay Sood | UCLA

Organizing Committee

Chair, Teaching Pre-conference

J. Frank Yates | University of Michigan

Chair, Tversky Symposium

Eldar Shafir | Princeton University

Webmaster (Submissions & Review)

Alan Schwartz | University of Illinois at Chicago

Loew's Santa Monica Beach Hotel
June 15-18, 2006
Submission deadline: March 1, 2006

Posted by DSN at 07:43 PM | Comments (0)

December 13, 2005

Interdisciplinary research conference in honor of Dick Wittink

COLLABORATIVE & MULTIDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH 2ND ANNUAL CONFERENCE

Yale Center for Consumer Insights at the Yale School of Management

May 4-6, 2006

Deadline for Submitting Abstracts: February 1, 2006

Abstracts are invited for the 2nd annual conference to be held at the Yale School of Management on May 4 - 6, 2006. This year's conference, sponsored by the Yale Center for Customer Insights and the Marketing Science Institute, is to commemorate and honor Dick Wittink's commitment to multidisciplinary and collaborative research, and his belief that there is great value in gathering together scholars and practitioners who are collaborating on rigorous and relevant research.

The inaugural conference, held last year from December 10-12, 2005 had over 100 attendees, with one third executives and two third academics. Participants included people from all over the US and representing over forty schools. Corporate representation included IBM, Intel, P&G, Coca Cola, CVS, Lufthansa, and Dream Works Pictures. The conference was also attended by people from other countries such as Holland, Germany, England, Belgium, Switzerland, Australia, and Singapore.

Abstracts on any of the following topics are welcomed:

*Behavioral Decision Theory
*Competition
*Consumer Preference Measurement
*Health Care
*ROI Based Marketing
*Scanner Data & Econometric Modeling

Abstracts should be two pages, double-spaced. They will be reviewed by the conference committee comprised of Ravi Dhar, Subrata Sen, and K. Sudhir (Yale); Pradeep Chintagunta, (Chicago); Peter Leeflang, (Groningen); David Reibstein, (Wharton); and Naufel Vilcassim, (LBS).

Conference sessions of ninety minutes each will allow for the presentation of three papers. Abstracts should be sent to Eugenia.hayes at yale.edu by February 1, 2006. Presenters will be notified by March 1, 2006.

The registration fee is $200. The registration form can be downloaded from our website www.cci.som.yale.edu.

The registration deadline is April 1, 2006. Presenter's registration fee, travel, and hotel expenses will be paid by the Yale Center for Customer Insights.

DSN is fanatically committed to interdisciplinary research.

Posted by dggoldst at 02:19 AM | Comments (0)

December 07, 2005

A postdoc with a track record

POSTDOCTORAL TRAINEESHIP IN QUANTITATIVE METHODS: UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN

NIMH funded training in quantitative methods for behavioral and social science. Appointment commences July or August 2006. Seminars on advanced topics include; combinatorial methods for data analysis, decision theory, mathematical psychology, multidimensional scaling, multivariate analysis, and social choice modeling. Opportunities for both methodological and applications research. Faculty includes: C. Anderson, D. Budescu, H. Chang, J. Douglass, S. Hong, L. Hubert, A. Klein, J. Meulman, G. Miller, M. Regenwetter, B. Roberts, J. Spencer-Smith and M. Wang. Stipend range: $35,568 to $41,796. Applicants should be US citizens or have been admitted for permanent residence. Funding limits appointments to individuals who are no more than two years post-PhD.

Curriculum Vitae, statement of research interests, reprints, and three letters of recommendation should be sent to: Prof. Michel Regenwtter, c/o Kim Mallory, NIMH Training Program in Quantitative Psychology, Department of Psychology, University of Illinois, 603 E. Daniel, Champaign, Illinois 61820. e-mail: regenwet at uiuc.edu Submissions must be received by February 28, 2006.

DSN can vouch that some very good people have gone through this postdoc program.

Posted by dggoldst at 09:46 AM | Comments (0)

December 05, 2005

A New (and old) Decision Making Conference

THE EDWARDS BAYESIAN RESEARCH CONFERENCE

Photo by Jim Shanteau

Ward Edwards, one of the main founders of the field of behavioral decision making, hosted the Bayesian Research Conference annually since 1961. For many years the conference was held in Studio City, CA, near Ward’s home. It is now hosted by Michael Birnbaum and Jie Weiss, JDM members from Cal State Fullerton, and has been moved to their campus. With the passing of Ward in 2005, we are honoring him and flattering ourselves by henceforth attaching his name to the conference.

The conference will take place January 12-13, 2006 in Fullerton, California

Features of the Edwards Bayesian Research Conference:

1) An intimate, friendly two-day meeting with no parallel sessions, lots of time for informal discussion, and low registration fee ($50). Sessions meet on the campus of Cal State Fullerton; excellent rates ($89 including breakfast and a Jacuzzi in every room) are available at the nearby Chase Suites.

2) An eclectic program. The label "Bayesian" was actually more narrow that the conference. Although there have always been talks about Bayesian analysis and reasoning, the talks in recent years have covered a wide variety of topics in both theoretical and applied aspects of decision making. Ward was very open-minded, and we will follow that tradition. Ward always asked for people to bring new ideas, even if not fully baked, for him to mull over. Two particular traditions of the Conference are that paper titles will be “improved” to be humorous and that time is allocated for discussion after every presentation.

3) The Conference is held prior to the Martin Luther King holiday weekend, with paper sessions Thursday and Friday. There will also be a reception Wednesday evening in the hotel and a party Friday evening (another of Ward’s traditions) at the nearby home of David and Jie Weiss.

4) It’s usually warm and sunny in Southern California in January (but there is non-zero utility attached to the umbrella at the bottom of the suitcase). On the Saturday following the conference, there will be a (no-cost) tennis session for those who dare.

5) The Cal State Fullerton campus is easily reached using Super Shuttle or Prime Time Shuttle. The closest four commercial airports are (in order of proximity):

Long Beach (LGB)
John Wayne-Orange County (SNA)
Ontario International (ONT)
Los Angeles International (LAX)

If you are interesting in attending, please see the conference website for further information (http://psych.fullerton.edu/mbirnbaum/bayes/) and a registration form. Please register before December 7, 2005.

Editors note: DSN has been to this conference twice and both times left having made meaningful acquaintances. Call it the small conference advantage.

Posted by dggoldst at 10:37 AM | Comments (0)

December 02, 2005

Because acting ethically is a decision

INTERNATIONAL CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY CONFERENCE

London Business School invites submissions to the third in a series of international corporate responsibility conferences (following the Haas conference in 2005 and the Boston conference in 2003). Topics for inclusion range widely but those of particular interest explore the implications of corporate responsibility, globalization and global business for business and marketing strategy. Research papers can be either empirical or conceptual. A selection of papers presented will be considered for a special issue of the California Management Review.

Abstracts must clearly identify your research question(s) and the actual/proposed methodology used. You will receive notice by January 31st, 2006 as to whether your topic has been selected for inclusion in the conference. Authors of successful submissions will be invited to submit a paper.

Please submit a maximum 500-word abstract of your topic to ncsmith at london.edu

Proposal submission deadline December 31st, 2005.

Topic areas include the following:

Consumer behavior, branding & corporate responsibility

· Brand equity as a driver of attention to corporate responsibility (e.g., how does corporate responsibility affect consumer behavior?)
· Vulnerabilities of global brands to corporate responsibility failures
· Cause-related marketing and corporate responsibility

Marketing mix and corporate responsibility issues

· Socially responsible pricing (e.g., essential medicines)
· Environmental impacts of products and packaging
· Supply chains and ethical sourcing (e.g., preventing sweatshops, supply chain monitoring and compliance)

Developing strategies for corporate responsibility

· Developing corporate responsibility strategies, including auditing the business and formulating corporate responsibility objectives
· Culture-specific interpretations of corporate responsibility, including developing country versus developed-country perceptions of corporate responsibility issues
· Strategies for the “Bottom of the Pyramid” (e.g., business opportunities in poor communities of developing countries, limitations of BOP strategies)

Corporate responsibility organization and management

· “Mainstreaming” corporate responsibility (embedding corporate responsibility in the day-to-day activities of the firm)
· Effective stakeholder engagement (e.g., developing stakeholder engagement skills, differences in stakeholder expectations across countries)
· Employees as drivers of attention to corporate responsibility

Metrics & reporting

· Measuring social and environmental performance of the global firm
· Linking corporate responsibility performance to economic performance and marketing metrics (e.g., sales, market share, brand equity)
· Social reporting challenges (e.g., effective communications, consumer backlash, legal, etc.)

Conference co-chairs:

N. Craig Smith, London Business School C.B. Bhattacharya, School of Management, Boston University David Levine, Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley.

The London Business School is grateful to the following sponsors for their financial support of this conference: Aspen Institute, Boston University, California Management Review, the Haas School of Business Center for Responsible Business (University of California, Berkeley), and London Business School.

Posted by DSN at 08:01 PM | Comments (0)