Core courses
Credits

Description:
This course is composed of three parts:

Organizational learning, behavioral strategy, and luck (Chengwei Liu)
The first part of the course focuses on organizational learning and its implications for strategy. We will cover canonical ideas/models, such as the exploration and exploitations trade-off, the traps when organizations learn from successes and failures, how randomness complicates learning, and how learning reinforces or changes organizational routines. A framework of strategy as arbitrage will be introduced to connect several ideas covered in this course.

Networks and organizations I: Core concepts and methods to understand networks in organizations (Eric Quintane)
The second part of the course introduces social network analysis within organizations. We will start by discussing key ideas and debates in social network analysis, such as the notion of embeddedness, network structure and the role of individual agency. We will then take a deeper dive into the methodological implications of doing research with social network data. We will cover 1) measures used to identify network positions and key network characteristics, 2) more advanced statistical models developed to handle the problem of dependence of observations and 3) concepts and measures regarding network dynamics. This first part will equip you with the knowledge that you need to embark in more advanced topics in network analysis.

Networks and organizations II: Further topics in network analysis, including competitive crowding, social comparisons, and semantic networks (Matt Bothner)
The third part of the course explores applications of network-analytic methods to a wide array of agents—plausible candidates for which include professional auto racers, gangsters, college fraternity members, and words in semantic networks.

Literature:
see syllabus

Lecturers:
Matt Bothner, Chengwei Liu, Eric Quintane

Time & venue:
Thursdays, 9:00-12:00; ESMT Berlin, Schlossplatz 1, room tba

Exam:
Class participation (25%), Paper presentations (30%), Term paper/referee report (45%)

More information can be found in the schedule and in the syllabus.

Lecturer(s)
Guest Lecturer(s)

Chengwei Liu

Eric Quintane