The research group in Management and Organization Studies seeks to advance our understanding of contemporary private and public organizations. In the current environment, organizations face novel and pressing challenges such as adapting to rapidly evolving technologies, coping with volatile product and capital markets, negotiating new partnerships and alliances, adjusting to changing employment relations, balancing the profit motive with social and environmental responsibility, and so on.

Researchers in Management and Organization Studies at UPF explore these and other challenges facing organizations. The group aims to become an international magnet for research excellence. It complements those research areas in management where the Department already has a strong position, including Finance and Operations Management. Group members also co-operate with other areas in the Department, such as Business and Experimental Economics as well as in the rest of the University, especially the Political and Social Sciences Department.

The group draws on a broad range of academic disciplines including psychology, sociology, decision sciences, statistics and marketing, and also builds on the solid basis of our Department in economics. We employ a wide variety of qualitative and quantitative research methods, including ethnography, content analysis of texts, case studies, statistical hypothesis testing, experiments, formal models, and so on. Our common topics of research interests include:

• The role of modern market intermediaries: consultants, securities analysts, traders, etc.
• The psychology of managerial decision making: educating judgment, bounded rationality, role of emotions
• Strategic integration of ethics and environmental concerns in decision making, dilemmas between economic value and ethical values
• The role of trust and fairness in organizations
• New forms of employment, its impact on private and public organizations, and its regulation
• Business strategy and consumer behaviour