Johannes Siebert

Tag: decision analysis

  • MCI Professor Johannes Siebert Receives Prestigious SDP Award

    MCI Professor Johannes Siebert Receives Prestigious SDP Award

    International recognition honors outstanding contributions to data-driven decision-making, supply chain management, and societal impact | Award presented at the 32nd SDP Annual Conference at the University of Massachusetts in Boston

    Johannes Siebert, Professor of Decision Sciences, Behavioral Economics, and Supply Chain Management at MCI, has been honored with the “Inspirational Achievement Award” by the Society for Decision Professionals (SDP). This internationally renowned award was presented during the 32nd SDP Annual Conference at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, recognizing exceptional achievements in decision analysis and outstanding commitment to advancing the field.

    At MCI, Johannes Siebert conducts research and teaching in the field of decision analysis, with a strong focus on data-driven decision-making, behavioral economics, and multi-criteria methods. A particular emphasis lies on the role of artificial intelligence in decision processes, as well as on making decision quality measurable and trainable – key aspects in fostering innovation, digitalization, and future competencies in both academia and industry.

    “Decision science is at a turning point: artificial intelligence is transforming how decisions are made. However, at the same time, the importance of structured, value-focused decision processes has never been greater. This award strongly motivates me to further advance the field across research, practice, and teaching,” says Johannes Siebert.

    Johannes Siebert regularly contributes his expertise to international applied projects for both private and public sector partners, including initiatives in the energy, transportation, and pharmaceutical industries. His achievements have earned him multiple nominations for the Practice Award of the Decision Analysis Society. His excellence in teaching has also received international recognition, including a finalist nomination for the highly regarded European Award for Excellence in Teaching in Social Sciences and Humanities.

    MCI Rector Andreas Altmann adds: “This award highlights what MCI stands for: excellence in research, strong practical orientation, and active engagement with key societal challenges. Johannes Siebert exemplifies these values and strengthens MCI’s international reputation as a leading institution in decision sciences and management education.”

    Further links:

    MCI Professor Johannes Siebert Nominated as Finalist for European Teaching Award

    International recognition for MCI Professor Johannes Siebert

    Best Paper Award – Decision Sciences Journal of Innovative Education

    Think Beyond: Smart Decision Making and Great Ideas at TEDxInnsbruck – MCI Innsbruck

    Learning to Decide Wisely and Becoming Happy

    The original press release can be found here: https://www.mci.edu/en/media-en/news/7127-mci-professor-johannes-siebert-receives-prestigious-sdp-award

  • Fifty years of decision analysis in operational research: A review

    Fifty years of decision analysis in operational research: A review

    We review the development of research in Decision Analysis (DA) over the past fifty years. After presenting the axiomatic foundations and discussing the DA process, we start with value-focused thinking as a problem structuring method. We then analyze the model building phase, with a focus on graphical models for decision-making under uncertainty: belief networks, decision trees, and influence diagrams. Next, we analyze how DA research has dealt with uncertainty focusing on the areas of elicitation, aggregation, and evaluation. We then discuss sensitivity analysis, describing local and global techniques, from one-way sensitivity analysis to the value of information. Finally, we review the literature on information acquisition and discuss the role of information value in this context

    Borgonovo, Emanuele; José, Victor, R. R, Shachter, Ross; Siebert, Johannes U; Ulu, Canan. “Fifty Years of Decision Analysis in Operational Research: A Review” (Invited Review on occasion of the celebration of the 50th Anniversary of EURO (the European association of Operational Research Societies), European Journal of Operational Research) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2025.05.023

  • Deciding for a Secure Tomorrow: Proactive Decision-Making and Retirement Financial Planning Behavior

    Deciding for a Secure Tomorrow: Proactive Decision-Making and Retirement Financial Planning Behavior

    Retirement financial planning behavior (RFPB) encompasses the concrete actions individuals take to prepare financially for retirement. We examine RFPB from an Operational Research (OR) perspective using Decision Analysis (DA) principles—decision quality and value-focused thinking—operationalized via proactive decision-making (PDM), which integrates DA-grounded proactive cognitive skills (PCS) with proactive personality traits derived from the organizational behavior literature. Using cross-sectional survey data from 457 UK adults and structural equation modelling with systematic model comparisons and multigroup tests, we assess whether PDM influences RFPB through four psychological traits—propensity to plan, confidence in financial information search, willingness to accept investment risk, and general self-efficacy—and whether relationships differ by financial literacy and numeracy. Results show that PDM affects RFPB entirely through these psychological traits (full mediation), with PCS—the trainable, DA-grounded decision-analytic skills—serving as the operative mechanism, while proactive personality traits are non-significant in this pathway. The mediated model explains 57.1% of RFPB variance and outperforms partial-mediation, traits-only, and reverse-causality alternatives. Multigroup analyses indicate that the indirect structure holds across financial literacy and numeracy groups, with patterns suggesting a compensatory role of PCS under lower financial literacy. Together, the evidence links DA-grounded decision-analytic skills to RFPB. Our findings highlight the potential of PCS-focused decision-analytic competence training as an OR-relevant mechanism to promote RFPB, complementing financial literacy and numeracy programs. Additionally, our study complements optimization-focused OR approaches to retirement financial planning by identifying PCS as a decision-analytic lever that strengthens RFPB—the behavioural precondition for adopting such optimized prescriptions in practice.

    Siebert, Jana; Siebert Johannes U., Blösl, Florian; “Deciding for a Secure Tomorrow – Examining Proactive Decision-Making and Retirement Planning Behavior”, European Journal of Operational Research) (in press), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2025.10.021