Category: Seminar Archive (2026)

Date: 27 April 2026, Monday Time: 12.30 – 13.30 "Empowered but not Emancipated: Deferential Entrepreneurship under Coercion" by Jeffrey McMullen Imperial College London Abstract  How can organizational actors exercise entrepreneurial agency when they are embedded in coercive “total institutions” marked by tight rules, surveillance, and discretionary punishment? Building on institutional work, practice-driven institutionalism, micro-power, and emancipatory entrepreneurship, this essay develops a mechanism-based account of deferential entrepreneurship under coercion. Using stylized incidents from The Shawshank Redemption as a disciplined illustrative device—a “thought experiment with pictures”—the essay explains how dominated insiders introduce new practices without incurring punishment and why such efforts typically yield localized, revocable empowerment rather than emancipation. The mechanism specifies that an actor (i) identifies an authority’s pain point, (ii) frames a practice with professional legitimacy and deference cues, and…

Date: 22 April 2026, Wednesday Time: 10.30 – 11.30 Online "CBDCs, Payment Firms, and Geopolitics" by Tobias Berg Geothe University Frankfurt Abstract  We analyze the effect of a major central bank digital currency (CBDC) – the digital euro – on the payment industry to find remarkably heterogeneous effects. Stock prices of U.S. payment firms decrease, while those of European payment firms increase in response to positive announcements on the digital euro. Bank stocks do not react significantly. We estimate a loss in market capitalization of USD 127 billion for U.S. payment firms, vis-à-vis a gain of USD 23 billion for European payment firms. Our results emphasize the medium-of-exchange function of CBDCs and point to the important role of geopolitical considerations in designing financial architecture. Bio Tobias Berg is Professor of…

Date: 10 April 2026, Friday Time: 16.30 – 17.30 Place: MA-330 "Consumer Attention to Data Disclosure: Evidence from Mobile Apps" by Kelly D. Martin Colorado State University Abstract The mobile apps that mediate everyday activities make data disclosures a routine part of people’s lives, but in fragmented prior research, the privacy threats associated with data disclosures dominate. To compliment such perspectives, the current research proposes a novel conceptualization that reflects how consumers respond when transparency policies make data disclosure practices salient. A large-scale, natural field experiment involving more than 700,000 app reviews, surrounding the introduction of Apple’s Privacy Nutrition Labels, reveals a negative relative effect of transparency on consumer attention to data disclosures. Yet as these labels diffused, and transparency became a platform standard, consumers seemed to attend specifically to…

Date: 01 April 2026, Wednesday Time: 10.30 – 11.30 Place: MA-330 "Balancing Exploration and Exploitation: The Role of Intuition–Analysis Versatility and Paradoxical Leadership" by Amir Mehralian Exeter Abstract  While ambidexterity research has largely emphasized macro-level mechanisms, the micro-level foundations that allow employees to balance exploration and exploitation remain underdeveloped. Yet, because organizational ambidexterity ultimately emerges from employees’ ability to enact both activities, uncovering these micro-foundations is essential. Drawing on dual-system theory and the paradox perspective, we theorize that cognitive flexibility enables employees to enact ambidexterity through intuition–analysis versatility—cognitive strategies to switch between and integrate intuitive and analytic modes of processing. Moreover, paradoxical leadership serves as a crucial boundary condition that legitimizes and motivates cognitively flexible employees to deploy versatile cognitive strategies and translate them into ambidextrous behaviors. Evidence from a…

Date: 27 March 2026, Friday Time: 13.30 – 14.30 "AI for Economics and Finance" by Lin William Cong Cornell University https://zoom.us/j/8909487052?omn=96499682404 Meeting ID: 890 948 7052 Abstract I characterize modern AI development as featuring two core themes: (i) goal-oriented end-to-end optimization in large modelling space, and (ii) generative pre-trained foundational models that enable economic world models and AI agents. Combining the insights from both, I identify promising directions in AI for Social Science Research. To start, I introduce Goal-Oriented Algorithms in Large Space (GOALS) involving transformer-based reinforcement learning or panel trees, which are particularly suited for answering questions related to optimal decision-making and modelling grouped heterogeneity in social science research. In several specific financial applications, I show how GOALS can effectively and flexibly manage investment portfolios, generate test portfolios or latent factors for evaluating extant…

Date: 25 March 2026, Wednesday Time: 10.30 – 11.30 Place: MA-330 "What the future may hold: Market formation of Social AI through sociotechnical imaginaries" by Hafize Çelik University of Bath https://zoom.us/j/8909487052?omn=92074757718 Meeting ID: 890 948 7052 Abstract  Artificial Intelligence marketplace offers a diverse set of consumer experiences with social AI services such as personal assistantship (e.g., ChatGPT, Siri), synthetic companionship (e.g., Replika), service workforce (e.g., Pepper), and care giving services (e.g., Paro). However, similar social AI products have been imagined by science fiction movies for the last 100 years. Drawing on Jasanoff and Kim’s (2009) sociotechnical imaginaries lens and Sara Mills’ (1997) discourse analysis, this research analyses fifteen systematically selected science fiction movies depicting social AI to explore how science-fiction movies imagine the future(s) of social AI market(s) and why…

Date: 09 March 2026, Monday Time: 13.30 – 14.30 Place: MA-330 "Accuracy and uncertainty in venture selection: The roles of experience and complexity” by Thomas Astebro HEC Paris Abstract  Venture capitalists, business angels, funding agencies, and incubators evaluate ventures,a difficult task where decision uncertainty is high. We examine how the degree of cognitive complexity and human expertise affects judges’ admission recommendations at an incubator. Judges read an application, use preset criteria to score it, and form an intuitive overall judgment to accept or reject the application. We model and test how cognitive complexity and judge expertise affect this judgment through a Bayesian classification model, with implications on classification uncertainty and accuracy. Judges demonstrate poor accuracy in evaluating venture quality, but we show that the decision environment is so noisy that…

Date: 04 March 2026, Wednesday Time: 10.30 – 11.30 Place: MA-330 "The Accredited Investor Definition, Private Investments, and Wealth Inequality in the US” by Aras Canipek Columbia University & SAFE Abstract  I study household finances around the income eligibility rules of the accredited investor definition that allow only high-income households access to private investments. Such investments have recently been linked to higher returns and the increase in wealth inequality. My analysis shows that access to private markets increases private investments. The result provides an answer to an important question in the literature and in politics: differences in private investments are not only caused by differences in abilities and tastes between wealthy and poor households, but also simply by access to private investments. Moreover, I find discontinuities in wealth and returns.…

Date: 25 February 2026, Wednesday Time: 10.30 – 11.30 Place: MA-330 "From Harm to Harmony? Epistemic Dominance and the Practice of Moral Repair” by Jordi Vives IESE Abstract  The restoration of damaged stakeholder relationships after a transgression, “moral repair,” has become an important and visible corporate practice. Yet, business ethics research offers incomplete guidance on it, because although organizations are investing in moral repair, victims frequently report dissatisfaction. Critical scholars generally attribute these failures to systemic power, but tend to overlook organization level repair tactics. Integrating these perspectives, we examine how systemic power shapes moral repair. Drawing on a case study of corporate repair efforts after the 2012 Marikana massacre in South Africa, we show that enduring victim dissatisfaction arises from epistemic dominance, a form of hegemonic power rooted in…

Date: 20 February 2026, Wednesday Time: 13.30 – 14.30 Place: MA-330 "Supply chain risk management: Sharing information and exploring uncertainty" by Stefan Minner Technical University of Munih Abstract  Different sources of uncertainty and local information present major challenges in logistics and supply chain coordination. Effective distributed data-driven learning and decision making requires a balance between proactive and reactive exploration and exploitation as well as uncertainty modeling in dynamically changing environments. We discuss cooperative and competitive coordination schemes, different information sources and fusion concepts, digital technologies and strategies for effective information sharing and learning, and economic frameworks for information valuation.  Bio Stefan Minner is a Full Professor for Logistics and Supply Chain Management at the School of Management, Technical University of Munich (TUM) and a core-member of the Munich Data Science…