Best proposal award: Algorithms and their impact on decision-making performance
The paper “Algorithms and their impact on decision-making performance: Experimental evidence from the pharmaceutical industry” by Sebastian Krakowski, Darek Haftor, Johannes Luger, Natallia Pashkevich, and Sebastian Raisch received best proposal award for the Behavioral Strategy Interest Group (IG) Track at the annual Strategic Management Society (SMS) conference 2019.
The paper reports the results of a field experiment designed to investigate the dynamics of humans-algorithm collaboration in organizational decision making. The authors study the performance outcomes of providing groups of sales managers with alternative versions of an algorithm-based sales support system. Surprisingly, they find that standardized algorithms – which are clearly superior in terms of functionality and information processing when compared to the control group’s legacy system – show a negative treatment effect on managers’ sales performance. Conversely, an algorithm adapted to sales managers’ cognitive styles indicate a positive treatment effect. The authors further explore the role of human experience and find evidence implying a human-algorithm interaction effect. Collectively, the results suggest intriguing complementarities in human and machine information processing when dealing with complex organizational decision-making.
Strategic Management Society (SMS) annual conference, 19-22 October 2019. Minneapolis, USA.
Darek Haftor is professor at the Department of Informatics and Media, Uppsala University.
Sebastian Krakowski, University of Geneva; Johannes Luger, Copenhagen Business School; Natallia Pashkevich, Södertörn ; University; Sebastian Raisch, University of Geneva.