PhD Defence Aljaž Sluga
In his dissertation 'Hour of Judgment: On judgment, decision making, and problem solving under accountability', Aljaz Sluga reported the results of a series of behavioral experiments designed to shed light on some of the following questions: How should accountability be implemented to elicit optimal performance from individuals? Does scrutinizing the process the accountable individual is using tend to yield more accurate judgments and decisions than focusing strictly on the outcome? Does the answer depend on the nature of the decision environment? Does the answer hold in the domain of problems that call for insightful solutions? What are the cognitive and affective mechanisms that mediate the differences in performance between process accountability and outcome accountability? Aljaz defended his dissertation on Thursday, 1 July at 13:00h. His supervisors were Prof. Prof. Frank Hartmann (Radboud University) and Dr. Maarten Boksem (RSM). The members of the Doctoral Committee were Prof. Erik Peek (RSM), Prof. Marcel van Rinsum (RSM), Prof. Gabriele Jacobs (EUR), Prof. Bart de Langhe (ESADE), Prof. Paula van Veen-Dirks (University of Groningen) and Stefan Schultz-Hardt (University of Göttingen).
About Aljaž Sluga
Aljaž Sluga received his degree in psychology from the University of Ljubljana in 2014. After graduation and a temporary gig as a market research analyst, he worked as a researcher at the Mind & Brain Lab at the University of Ljubljana. In 2015, he started his PhD at the Rotterdam School of Management and the Erasmus Research Institute of Management, investigating accountability under the supervision of Prof. dr. Frank G. H. Hartmann and Dr. Maarten A. S. Boksem. During the PhD, he attended and presented at academic conferences and conducted workshops in academic and business settings. In 2021, he has started working as a data scientist at Studio Moderna.
Thesis Abstract
Accurate judgment, adaptive decision making, and ability to find insightful solutions to challenging problems are some of the key qualities organizations aspire to instill in their members. In the service of this goal, designers of management systems draw on a variety of approaches, ranging from formal contracts to subtle “nudges.” At the core of many of these approaches is the idea of accountability, the use of external scrutiny to bring about desired behavior and outcomes. How should accountability be implemented to elicit optimal performance from individuals? Does scrutinizing the process the accountable individual is using tend to yield more accurate judgments and decisions than focusing strictly on the outcome? Does the answer depend on the nature of the decision environment? Does the answer hold in the domain of problems that call for insightful solutions? What are the cognitive and affective mechanisms that mediate the differences in performance between process accountability and outcome accountability? Are these effects robust or do they depend on currently insufficiently understood moderating factors? This dissertation reports the results of a series of behavioral experiments designed to shed light on these and related questions.
