Johannes Siebert

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  • Making a good career choice: A decision-analytical intervention to enhance proactive decision-making and career choice self-efficacy in high school students

    Making a good career choice: A decision-analytical intervention to enhance proactive decision-making and career choice self-efficacy in high school students

    At the end of high school, teenagers must deal with the first life-changing decision of determining what to do after graduation. For these decisions, adolescents need to be able to make good choices. However, most schools have not yet implemented decision training into their curricula. A new intervention called “KLUGentscheiden!” was developed to train complex decision-making in high school students to close this gap.

    The intervention targets three critical components of good decision-making: envisioning one’s objectives, identifying relevant alternatives, and comparing the identified alternatives by a weighted evaluation. We assumed that successfully training those decision-analytical steps should enhance self-perceived proactive decision-making skills. In addition, the training should also enhance self-assessed career choice self-efficacy.

    The intervention was evaluated in a pseudorandomized control study, including 193 high school students. The intervention group significantly increased proactive decision-making skills and career choice self-efficacy compared to the control group. Although different long-term evaluations are still pending, the KLUGentscheiden! intervention provides an essential tool for training complex decision-making in high school students. It also has the potential to apply to other career choices of young individuals, such as choosing majors, a final thesis, a job, or a field of work.

    Siebert, Johannes U., Becker, Maxi; Oeser, Nadine. “Making the right career choice: A new educational tool to train decision-making proactivity in high school students” (Decision Sciences Journal for Innovative Education), https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/dsji.12280.

  • “Smart decisions make you really happy”: MCI MOOC top-rated course on iMooX

    “Smart decisions make you really happy”: MCI MOOC top-rated course on iMooX

    Smart decisions make people really happy! Within the first nine months, 650 satisfied participants have already learned how to actively make them in our MCI MOOC “Smart Decisions” by Prof. Johannes Siebert. The MOOC is the best-rated course among over 100 courses on the iMooX platform and has a rating of 4.98 out of 5.00 stars.

    The core of the free MOOC consists of 8 interactive videos with a total length of just over 2.5 hours. In addition, more in-depth teaching materials, reflection exercises and quizzes are provided. Participants are also encouraged to work on their own running example(s).

    Prof. Siebert explains why many people make bad decisions and how they can avoid that. He presents some simple but effective methods based on recent developments in behavioral economics and decision sciences. The participants learn to make reflective and conscious decisions. Therefore, Prof. Siebert enables the participants to become their own so-called decision architects. A short summary of this concept can be found in the TEDxTalk „Nudge yourself to make better decisions“ by Prof. Siebert.

    The methods presented are basically suitable for almost all decisions. Since career decisions are highly relevant not only for students, Prof. Siebert explains the methods consistently on career decisions. In particular, he focuses on the choice of jobs after graduation.

    The advantages of a MOOC are particularly evident in self-directed learning. Learners can plan, design and evaluate their learning process independently. This is a key competence that is indispensable for lifelong, successful learning. Teachers can also actively promote self-directed learning in the classroom by working with authentic and realistic problems or projects, for example. Instead of directly teaching the theoretical and practical principles, they let the students work independently. This also motivates them to take on new and complex challenges.

    So, what do students say about this form of learning? What do they particularly like about it? Here are a few reviews from our MCI MOOC.

    “The explanations in the videos were easy to understand and could immediately be applied. The flexibility of location and time of online courses is the biggest advantage of a course like that.”

    “Content well structured, good mix of learning and applying, understandably formulated and comprehensible.”

    “The clear, entertaining food for thought and the tasks for reflection on this, based on own objectives.”

    “The great revision through the breaks/interruptions in the videos as well as the incorporated questions – pretty cool!”

    If you are interested, you can sign up for the free MOOC here.

    Why should you address your ability to make good decisions? Those who make good decisions are subsequently more satisfied with their lives. In addition, a research team led by Prof. Siebert was able to empirically prove that good, proactive decision-making can be increased through decision-making training such as lectures or a MOOC. More information on this can be found here. Taken together, research indicates that students in courses taught by Prof. Siebert at the Entrepreneurial School® not only learn to make more proactive decisions, but as a result, are more satisfied with their lives.

    We invite you to make use of the fascinating proactive decision-making in our attractive study programs (BA Wirtschaft & Management for Professionals, BA Business & Management, and MA International Business & Management) to accelerate your personal and academic development as well as your professional career.

    „MCI MOOC “Smart Decisions” top-rated MOOC“, News of the Research Area Innovation, Entrepreneurship & Marketing at MCI | THE ENTREPRENEURIAL SCHOOL®, 3rd of October 2022 (link)

  • How do I get clear about whether I want kids?

    How do I get clear about whether I want kids?

    The ideal of a large family with children still exists. But many people today are unsure whether they really want that. They may be in their 20s or 30s, their friends are having babies, and they imagine what it will be like. They observe beaming but stressed parents. And they themselves haven’t made up their minds yet – because they’re actually quite happy with the way their lives are right now. At the same time, there’s the fear of missing out. How do you find out what’s right?

    Lisa Breit spoke with experts from various disciplines about this question: Johannes Siebert is a decision researcher, Melanie Hausler is a psychologist and happiness researcher, and Johannes Frass is a life coach and budding psychotherapist in Vienna. They explain how to make the decision and whether children really do make you happier.

    You can find the article in the Standard here: https://www.derstandard.at/story/2000137561015/wie-werde-ich-mir-klar-ob-ich-kinder-will

  • Supporting Innovation in Early-Stage Pharmaceutical Development Decisions

    Supporting Innovation in Early-Stage Pharmaceutical Development Decisions

    Pharmaceutical companies have frequent portfolio reviews to monitor development progress and prioritize development assets. The earliest assets are drug candidates whose efficacy is unknown and whose effects on the human body have yet to be fully investigated. These assets are characterized by a high degree of uncertainty in reaching the market and in being used in clinical practice. In addition, not all potential applications are foreseen and can often be very different. In the absence of satisfactory methods for making decisions on resource allocation among early development assets, decision makers focus almost exclusively on assessments of an asset’s probability of technical success.

    This study proposes a more holistic methodology to support early-stage pharmaceutical development decisions using value-focused thinking and multicriteria decision making. The methodology operates within the decision quality framework and provides a consistent evaluation of various early development assets across a diverse set of disease areas. This combination of concepts and methodologies has been implemented and proven valuable at Bayer Pharmaceuticals, which needed a new, more robust decisionmaking process for early development. Thus, this study discusses how to enable concrete trade-offs at the level of corporate objectives to align, communicate, and translate corporate strategy into portfolio strategy.

    In addition, this study presents learnings for decision analysts and decision makers in the pharmaceutical industry on how to develop a set of fundamental objectives, how to create scales to operationalize these objectives, and how to take steps to debias an organizational decision-making process.

    Methling, Florian; Borden, Steffen A., Veeraraghavan, Deepak; Sommer; Insa, Siebert, Johannes Ulrich; von Nitzsch, Rüdiger; Seidler, Mark „Supporting Innovation in Early-Stage Pharmaceutical Development Decisions “, in Special Issue on Health Decision Analysis: Evolution, Trends, and Emerging Topics by Elisa F. Long, Gilberto Montibeller, Jun Zhuang, Decision Analysis (INFORMS), https://doi.org/10.1287/deca.2022.0452

  • The research project PerFake explores methods to reduce the influence of fake news on individuals

    The research project PerFake explores methods to reduce the influence of fake news on individuals

    Fake news became a global phenomenon with the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the Brexit referendum, particularly because more and more people are using social media as a source of news without reflection. The spread of fake news on the Internet and its consequences are being intensively discussed in the European Parliament. Nevertheless, so far, there is no clear agreement on how to reduce the influence of fake news.

    „The problem with fake news is that even if it is flawlessly identified as such, something still „sticks“ – the fake news continues to influence our opinion”, explains Prof. Johannes Siebert, who researches and teaches at MCI | The Entrepreneurial School®. This phenomenon is called „belief perseverance bias“ and explains the great influence of fake news on the formation of opinion and the decision-making behavior of many people. „There are numerous newsrooms and nonprofit organizations that identify fake news. This very elaborate work helps reduce the influence of fake news. However, these fact checks can only be a first step,“ adds Dr. Jana Siebert from the Palacky University Olomouc in the Czech Republic.

    The two researchers have been working on the methodological reduction of the belief perseverance bias in the context of fake news in the project „PerFake“ funded by the European Union and the Czech Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports. The aim of the PerFake project was to contribute to reducing the negative influence of fake news. Prof. Johannes Siebert and Dr. Jana Siebert developed two methods to reduce the belief perseverance bias and tested and optimized them in two experiments with numerous participants. The experiments consisted of three main steps. Participants were (1) confronted with fake news, (2) informed that it was fake news, and (3) confronted with methods to reduce the bias. At each step, participants’ opinion was measured to determine the bias and analyze the effectiveness of the methods to reduce that bias.

    Both tested debiasing methods showed promising results in reducing the belief perseverance bias. The debiasing method „counter-speech“ focuses on refuting the fake news by clear counter-arguments. The debiasing method „awareness training“ generally informs the participants about the existence of the belief perseverance bias and how the bias works. Such awareness training could help increase society’s resilience to fake news. Prof. Johannes Siebert explains how this can work in practice: „Let us assume you have received a piece of information, for example, you have heard a speech by a politician or read a post on social media. A fact check shows that it is fake news. Being aware of the belief perseverance bias should then help you realize that your original opinion may still be negatively influenced by the fake news and subsequently correct this bias.“ Dr. Jana Siebert adds: „It would, therefore, be desirable to educate the public about the belief perseverance bias and the way it works. For example, fact-checking organizations could complement their fact checks with a note informing about the belief perseverance bias. Such a note could significantly increase the effectiveness of fact-checking and society’s resilience to fake news.“

    Source: „Reduktion des Einflusses von Fake News“, News des Forschungsschwerpunks Innovation, Entrepreneurship & Marketing at MCI | THE ENTREPRENEURIAL SCHOOL®, 24th of February 2022 (link)

  • Fact checks can only be a first step

    Fact checks can only be a first step

    Fake news: a globalphenomenon with a negative impact on opinions. Professor Johannes Siebert from MCI and Dr. Jana Siebert from Palacky University Olomouc are fighting against this with their project “PerFake”.

    “Misinformation has always been a part of our society,” says Johannes Siebert. With the Brexit referendum and the 2016 U.S. presidential election, fake news – “misinformation deliberately spread to manipulate opinions,” the professor says – has become a global phenomenon. Ubiquitous. The spread of false facts has been aided in recent years by digital social networks, he said. In particular, by the fact that more and more people living in their Facebook bubble unthinkingly refer to it as a source for news.

    You can find the full interview here: https://www.unipress.at/wissenschaft/faktenchecks-koennen-nur-ein-erster-schritt-sein/

  • The luck of the wise decision

    The luck of the wise decision

    Very few people have learned how to make good decisions. Yet the ability to consciously find optimal decisions makes people happier in life. In the Standard, I explain how people can train themselves to make better decisions and, as a result, be more satisfied with their lives.

    Being self-determined means constantly making your own decisions. As we all know, these are not always the right ones. Afterwards, one is usually smarter, but then also often more frustrated, because what was actually planned did not occur. Johannes Siebert from the Management Center Innsbruck (MCI) and his team have proven this connection in several empirical studies: “We have shown in a structural equation model that those who have higher proactive cognitive abilities for decision-making are subsequently more satisfied with their lives,” Siebert reports. Such skills, which are necessary for making wise decisions in private life or at work, can be improved through appropriate training….

    The full article by Johannes Lau can be found here.

    References

    Siebert, Johannes U., Becker, Maxi; Oeser, Nadine. “Making the right career choice: A new educational tool to train decision-making proactivity in high school students” (Decision Sciences Journal for Innovative Education), https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/dsji.12280

    Siebert, Johannes U.; Kunz, Reinhard, Rolf, Philipp. “Effects of decision training on individuals’ decision-making proactivity”, European Journal of Operational Research, 294 (1) 2021, 264-282 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2021.01.010

    Siebert, Johannes U.; Kunz, Reinhard, Rolf, Philipp. “Effects of Proactive Decision Making on Life Satisfaction”, European Journal of Operational Research, 280(1) 2020, 1171-1187,  doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2019.08.0111

    Siebert, Johannes U.; Kunz, Reinhard. “Developing and Validating the Multidimensional Proactive Decision-Making Scale”. Special Issue „Behavioral Operations Research“ in European Journal of Operational Research, 249(3) 2016, 864-877.dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2015.06.066

  • How to make the better life decisions

    How to make the better life decisions

    Can we learn to make decisions in such a way that they positively influence developments in our private lives or in companies in the long term? Only if the character traits are right, says research.

    “A large proportion of companies make extremely poor decisions because they are unable to identify their objectives,” explains Johannes Siebert of Management Center Innsbruck (MCI). Only if the company’s objectives and values were defined could they be systematically pursued. If this does not happen, clinging to the status quo reigns instead of proactively initiating change. According to Siebert, making the right decisions is also the basis for entrepreneurial success.

    In Die Presse, I explain how people can make decisions and subsequently be more satisfied with their lives. Just follow this link.

    Sources

    Siebert, Johannes U.; Kunz, Reinhard, Rolf, Philipp. “Effects of decision training on individuals’ decision-making proactivity”, European Journal of Operational Research, 294 (1) 2021, 264-282 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2021.01.010

    Siebert, Johannes U.; Kunz, Reinhard, Rolf, Philipp. “Effects of Proactive Decision Making on Life Satisfaction”, European Journal of Operational Research, 280(1) 2020, 1171-1187,  doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2019.08.0111

    Siebert, Johannes U.; Kunz, Reinhard. “Developing and Validating the Multidimensional Proactive Decision-Making Scale”. Special Issue „Behavioral Operations Research“ in European Journal of Operational Research, 249(3) 2016, 864-877.dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2015.06.066

  • Effects of Decision Training On Individuals’ Decision-Making Proactivity

    Effects of Decision Training On Individuals’ Decision-Making Proactivity

    Decision sciences are in general agreement on the theoretical relevance of decision training. From an empirical standpoint, however, only a few studies test its effectiveness or practical usefulness, and even less address the impact of decision training on the structuring of problems systematically. Yet that task is widely considered to be the most crucial in decision-making processes, and current research suggests that effectively structuring problems and generating alternatives—as epitomized by the concept of proactive decision making—increases satisfaction with the decision as well as life satisfaction more generally.

    This paper empirically tests the effect of decision training on two facets of proactive decision making—cognitive skills and personality traits—and on decision satisfaction. In quasi-experimental field studies based on three distinct decision-making courses and two control groups, we analyze longitudinal data on 1,013 decision makers/analysts with different levels of experience. The results reveal positive training effects on proactive cognitive skills and decision satisfaction, but we find no effect on proactive personality traits and mostly non-significant interactions between training and experience. These results imply the practical relevance of decision training as a means to promote effective decision making even by more experienced decision makers.

    The findings presented here may be helpful for operations research scholars who advocate for specific instruction concerning proactive cognitive skills in courses dedicated to decision quality and/or decision theory and also for increasing, in such courses, participants’ proactive decision making and decision satisfaction. Our results should also promote more positive decision outcomes.

    Veröffentlichung Siebert, Johannes U.; Kunz, Reinhard, Rolf, Philipp. “Effects of decision training on individuals’ decision-making proactivity”, European Journal of Operational Research, 294 (1) 2021, 264-282, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2021.01.010

  • Developing and Validating the Multidimensional Proactive Decision-Making Scale

    Developing and Validating the Multidimensional Proactive Decision-Making Scale

    The crucial research questions are how their proactivity in decision situations can characterize individuals, the eventual consequences of proactivity in decision situations, and how the degree of proactivity affects satisfaction with one’s decisions. The scale on Proactive Decision Making (PDM) that has been theoretically developed from literature and empirically validated in cooperation with Prof. Reinhard Kunz (University of Cologne) allows for describing the degree of proactivity of individuals with six dimensions. Two dimensions cover proactive personality traits: ‘striving for improvement’ and ‘showing initiative’. The four dimensions ‘systematical identification of objectives’, ‘systematical identification of information’, ‘systematical identification of alternatives’, and “using a ‘decision radar’ concern proactive cognitive skills and integrate the ideas and concepts of value-focused thinking and decision quality into the PDM-scale.

    This scale provides the basis for analyzing many research questions. For instance, proactive individuals are significantly more satisfied with their decisions, and the scale can explain up to 50% of the variance of decision satisfaction. In another study, the scale was used a priori and ex-post to analyze the impact of an online course on decision-making on the participants. In line with hypotheses derived from literature, the degree of the proactive personality traits remains stable while the degree of the proactive cognitive skills improved through the training significantly. Furthermore, we were able to link proactive cognitive skills to life satisfaction. Scholars who teach courses on decision-making can use these results to claim the relevance and impact of their courses.

    Publications

    Siebert, Johannes; Kunz, Reinhard. “Developing and Validating the Multidimensional Proactive Decision-Making Scale”. Special Issue „Behavioral Operations Research“ in European Journal of Operational Research 249(3) 2016, 864-877, dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2015.06.066

    Siebert, Johannes; Kunz, Reinhard, Rolf, Philipp. “Effects of Proactive Decision Making on Life Satisfaction”, European Journal of Operational Research 280(1), 2020, 1171-1187, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2019.08.011

    Siebert, Johannes U.; Kunz, Reinhard, Rolf, Philipp. “Effects of decision training on individuals’ decision-making proactivity”, European Journal of Operational Research, 294 (1) 2021, 264-282,https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2021.01.010