Rethinking Interdisciplinary Approaches to Decision-Making: Choice, Culture, and Context

June 3-4, 2019


Location

IKGF Seminar Room, Building D1
Hartmannstraße. 14,
91052 Erlangen


The academic study of decision-making provides a highly interdisciplinary field that incorporates research from a variety of disciplines, including, but not limited to, branches of behavioral economics, political science, economic anthropology, business management, and social and cultural anthropology. At the moment, the Elite Master's Program "Standards of Decision-Making Across Cultures" (SDAC) is hoping to broaden its disciplinary horizons by opening a discourse exploring different cultural approaches to decision-making processes, which we will contextualize within the program's emerging theoretical perspective. Drawing from the IKGF's comprehensive experience in studying issues related to modes of prognostication, as well as the relationship between prognostication and forms of goal-oriented behavior, the SDAC and IKGF will jointly host a workshop on the 3rd through the 4th of June 2019 titled "Rethinking interdisciplinary approaches to decision-making: Choice, culture, and context".

One of the workshop's primary goals will be to address the complexity of the term 'decision-making' itself and explore its variable usage across the disciplines represented by the workshop participants. Additionally, the scope of the workshop will include questions of intercultural rationality, time as an aspect of decision making, and the comparative cultural dynamics of different decision-making processes.

In order to catalyze a shared conversation on the subject, in addition to their principal presentation, participants will be invited to discuss the following questions:

  • What is your disciplinary understanding of decision-making?
  • Is your understanding of decision-making linked to broader discourses on rationality, ethics, or free will? If so, how?
  • In what way is your research relevant to the concept of decision-making?
  • Is the study of theoretical and material decision-making tools or processes relevant in your research?

At the participants' discretion, selected submissions to the workshop proceedings will be published in an edited volume.


For more information, please contact Petra Hahm (petra.hahm@fau.de).


Downloads

Poster Flyer


Program

Monday, 3 June

9:00 Welcome of Participants
9:15 Opening Remarks
Prof. Michael Lackner (IKGF, FAU Erlangen)
9:30 Power and Destiny: Decision-Making Between Agency and Contingency. Perspectives from Religious Studies.
Prof. Klaus Hock (University of Rostock)
10:15 Decision-Making and Religious Studies - A Fruitful Endeavor?
Dr. Esther-Maria Guggenmos (FAU)
11:00 Coffee Break
11:30 Through a Glass Darkly: the Specter of 'Savage Thought' in Social Anthropology
Prof. Alexander Smith (SDAC, FAU)
12:15 Decision-Making in Human Resource Management: Science or Superstition?
Dr. Christof Niederwieser (IKGF, FAU)
13:00 Lunch Break
14:00 Decision Making – The Pitfalls of Rational Organization Theory
Prof. Aida Bosch (SDAC/Institute of Sociology, FAU) and Prof. Markus Promberger (IAB, FAU)
14:45 Between Agency and Structure. Sociological Approaches to Decision-Making
Anna Schneider (SDAC, FAU)
15:30 Coffee Break
16:00 Two Shades of Blackness: The Impact of Double Consciousness on Collective Decision-Making in African American Sports Activism
Yasmine Nawar (SDAC, FAU)
16:45 Concepts of Decision-Making in Political Science in an Interdisciplinary Perspective
Sven Grundmann (SDAC, FAU)

Tuesday, 4 June

9:00 Welcome of Participants
9:15 The Emperor's Teacher: Decision-Making in the World's Greatest Empire
Prof. Robert LaFleur (Beloit College/ SDAC, FAU)
10:00 Categorizing and Selecting: Modular Counting Procedures in Decision-Making Processes
Prof. Stephanie Homola (SDAC, FAU)
10:45 Coffee Break
11:15 Unclogging Strategies: The Challenges of Establishing Sinology-Based Heuristics
Dr. Dimitri Drettas (SDAC, FAU)
12:00 Decision-Making Processes and Cultural Values in China: Rethinking Approaches with Social Media Application
Dr. Martina Gottwald-Belinic (SDAC, FAU)
12:45 Lunch Break
13:45 - 15:00 Discussion of Workshop Proceedings
18:15 Foundations of Decision-Making: Liberties, Liabilities, and Lies
Keynote Speech by Prof. Joachim Gentz (IKGF Advisory Board Member/ University of Edinburgh)



International Consortium for Research in the Humanities

"Fate, Freedom and Prognostication. Strategies for Coping with the Future in East Asia and Europe."

Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg
Hartmannstr. 14
91052 Erlangen
Telefon: +49 (0)9131 85 - 64340
Fax: +49 (0)9131 85 - 64360
E-Mail: Petra.Hahm@ikgf.uni-erlangen.de