Sebastian
Hafenbrädl

Associate Professor of Managing People in Organizations

• Ph.D. in Management, University of Lausanne, HEC

Sebastian Hafenbrädl holds a Ph.D. in Management from the Faculty of Business and Economics (HEC) at the University of Lausanne, and a diploma in Technology and Management from the Technical University of Munich. Prior to joining IESE, he completed his post-doctoral research at the School of Management at Yale University.

At the forefront of his research lies the broad question of how people, and especially managers, make decisions, and how we can support and empower them to make better decisions. Not just better for themselves, but also for those affected by the outcomes, the organizations they operate within, and for society as a whole. This requires an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on the intersection of psychology, management, and economics, taking into account that people are embedded in groups, organizations, and societies with their economic and political systems, and that their decisions shape and are shaped by people´s social environments and by institutional forces.

His research appears in leading academic journals including, among others, Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, Journal of Business Research, Nature Human Behavior, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), and Science Advances.

Areas of interest.

* Judgment and Decision making
* Behavioral Economics
* Organizational Behavior
* Leadership
* Business Ethics
* Institutional Logics

Publications

Journal Articles (refereed)

KANNGIESSER, P., SUNDERARAJAN, J., HAFENBRÄDL, S., WOIKE, J. K. (2024). Children sustain cooperation in a threshold public goods game even when seeing others’ outcomes. PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE, 35 (10), 1094-1107. doi:10.1177/09567976241267854. ZICKFELD, J. H., ŚCIGAŁA, K. A., ELBAEK, C. T., MICHAEL, J., TØNNESEN, M. H., LEVY, G., AYAL, S., THIELMANN, I., NOCKUR, L., PEER, E., CAPRARO, V., BARKAN, R., BØ, S., BAHNÍK, Š., NOSENZO, D., HERTWIG, R., MAZAR, N., WEISS, A., KOESSLER, A.-K., MONTAL-ROSENBERG, R., HAFENBRÄDL, S., NIELSEN, Y. A., KANNGIESSER, P., SCHINDLER, S., GERLACH, P., KÖBIS, N., JACQUEMET, N., VRANKA, M., ARIELY, D., BIN MARTUZA, J., FELDMAN, Y., BIAŁEK, M., WOIKE, J. K., RAHWAN, Z., SEIDL, A., CHOU, E., KAJACKAITE, A., SCHUDY, S., GLOGOWSKY, U., CZARNA, A. Z., PFATTHEICHER, S., ... MITKIDIS, P. (2024). Effectiveness of ex ante honesty oaths in reducing dishonesty depends on content. Nature Human Behavior. (Online first) LIPPERT, S., DREBER, A., JOHANNESSON, M., TIERNEY, W., CYRUS-LAI, W., UHLMANN, E. L., EMOTION EXPRESSION COLLABORATION, ... PFEIFFER, T. (2024). Can large language models help predict results from a complex behavioural science study? Royal Society Open Science, 11 (9), article 240682. doi:10.1098/rsos.240682.

Proceedings

WAEGER, D., HAFENBRÄDL, S. (2020). An agenda setting model of stakeholder influence. Annual Meeting Proceedings: Virtual 2020. Academy of Management Proceedings.

Outreach Articles

HAFENBRÄDL, S., WAEGER, D. (2018). Most Executives Believe in the Business Case for CSR. So Why Don't They Invest More in It? Harvard Business Review Digital Articles.

Book Chapters

HOFFRAGE, U., HAFENBRÄDL, S., MAREWSKI, J. (2018). The Fast-and-Frugal Heuristics Program. In Linden J. Ball, Valerie A. Thompson (Eds.), International Handbook of Thinking And Reasoning (pp. 325 - 345). Abingdon, Oxon ; New York: Routledge. HOFFRAGE, U., HAFENBRÄDL, S. (2016). Cognitive Illusions. In Harold L. Miller, Jr. (Eds.), The SAGE Encyclopedia of Theory in Psychology (pp. 148 - 151). Chicago: Sage Publications. HAFENBRÄDL, S., HOFFRAGE, U., WHITE, C. M. (2013). The impact of affect on willingness-to-pay and desired-set-size. In C. Pammi and N. Srinivasan (Ed.), Decision Making: Neural and Behavioural Approaches (pp. 21 - 35). Amsterdam: Elsevier.

Outputs in other media

HAFENBRÄDL, S. (2020). Über Wahrscheinlichkeiten und Prozentsätze in Zeiten von Corona. ZPA. HAFENBRÄDL, S., WOIKE, J. K. (2020). Why ranking staff leads to destructive competition among colleagues. People Management.