040228 UE Experimental Methods I: Agent Based Modelling in Organisations (MA) (2020W)

Agent Based Modelling, and Computational Methods in general, can provide valuable insights into the functioning of organisations. In academic research, simulations have long been used as a complementary tool besides traditional empirical work and laboratory experiments to produce propositions for empirical validation, model real-world scenarios and generate artificial datasets.

This class is an introductory course to modelling techniques in the context of organizational studies and should serve as a basis for the corresponding follow-up course. Whereas this second class will be focused on actual implementation of simulations, the first course will lay out the foundations for this by focusing on understanding the main ingredients needed in computational modelling, developing ideas on how to get from a research question to an actual model (mainly on the basis of pseudocode) and providing an introduction to the programming language Python which will be used for implementation later on.

Students will learn when computational models can be used, how they can be usefully employed and what the main advantages and limitations of this method are. Furthermore, participants will be familiarized with existing work in this domain and will have to prepare presentations based on peer-reviewed publications in some of the highest ranked journals in the field.