This is a doctoral-level seminar designed to expose PhD students to some of the most recent and interdisciplinary topics in strategic management research with a particular focus on the sub‐field of behavioral strategy.

The field of strategic management is fundamentally concerned with understanding why some firms perform better than others. Behavioral strategy aims to ground strategic management in realistic assumptions about human cognition, descriptively accurate drivers of choice, emotion, and social interaction.

We will approach this topic by examining key assumptions that impact how we study and interpret competition, firm boundaries, governance mechanisms, knowledge exchange and creation, technological change, goals, and finally, outcomes of these productive relationships. We will also focus on the question of the core properties of organizations defined by interdependent nature of activities. We will draw extensively from related disciplinary research in the fields of economics, sociology, and psychology. We will touch upon a range of different contributions, from the theoretical to the empirical, and from the classic to the current.

We will also discuss about the gestation and review process of two working papers dealing with two of the topics covered during the course. This should help students begin to familiarize with the process of getting published.