Leading In Organizations Using Intelligent Decision Support Systems

Introduction

In contemporary organizations, employees and managers both make decisions with and are affected by decisions made by algorithms. This transforms organizations and workflows. In this course, we aim to show how leaders and organizations can utilize technology and data to make better decisions, and how this can affect organizational processes and employee outcomes. This course uses current organizational and decision-making theories to understand how decision support tools can help organizations become better organized for decision making and task solving. As future leaders and practitioners within the field of leadership and organizational psychology, it is important for students to learn and understand how technology and decision support systems affect leadership and team processes as well as employee outcomes. The goal is to explore this topic from a multi-level perspective including individual, team, and organizational side. At the individual level, this course explores how decisions made by algorithms affect work and employee outcomes, such as meaningfulness and motivation. At the team level, we will ask how teams make collaborative decisions with algorithms and how this affects team interactions, processes, and outcomes. At the organizational level, we will explore how organizations and leaders can become more data driven and utilize the new technology to create value and change organizational processes.

Course content

Topics covered in the course include:

• Digital labour and gig work: how intelligent decision support systems affect work and its outcomes (e.g., careers, meaningfulness, leadership processes, and team mental models)
• Multiagent teams: intelligent decision support systems, team cognition, and decision making
• Trust and reliability of algorithmic decision making from the perspective of organizational psychology
• Mapping and understanding business processes and routines from the perspective of organizational theory
• Platforms and technologies enabling intelligent decision support systems
• Human-AI symbiosis in organizational decision making