The new Inbev – Baillet Latour Chair in Error Management at Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management (Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium) invites applications for two Post-Doctoral research positions.

ABOUT the Chair:

Pushing the frontier of Error Management

There has never been a greater abundance of theoretical and practical lessons on how to “manage successfully” and “do the right thing”. Yet , management errors continue to be part and parcel of organizational life. While short-term consequences can be benign, leaving managerial errors unaddressed in the longer term can imply severe financial underperformance or even wholesale bankruptcy. Unfortunately the causes of managerial errors often are deep-seated and hard to control. Emotional conflict, managerial hubris, bandwagon behaviour, a dysfunctional culture and organizational politics are amongst the most resilient sources of flawed decision-making; including the failure to consider all relevant information and the neglect of long-term consequences.

Given the impossibility to avoid managerial errors altogether, the objective of the Chair is to focus attention on “managing errors once they’ve been made”. Research produced by the Chair will benefit managers, businesses and society at large by raising awareness about the importance of early stage error detection, and by building an action-oriented agenda on how to remediate managerial errors efficiently and effectively.

ABOUT Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management (SBSEM)

SBS-EM is the school of economics and management of the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), with a century-old tradition of excellence in higher education. SBS-EM has 56 full-time faculty members and more than 150 affiliate faculty members from other departments or from practice. It offers 2 bachelor degrees, 4 masters (economics, business & economics, management sciences, business engineering), a Ph.D. program in economics and management, an MBA and a full range of executive education programs. About 3000 full-time students are enrolled in our programs. The school has a strong research focus with four research centres (Centre Emile Bernheim, DULBEA, ECARES and iCite) and several more thematic research units. It is Equis and AMBA accredited. The school benefits from ULB’s strategic partnerships with top institutions around the world, including for instance Berkeley, Oxford, Cambridge, and Waseda, to facilitate international research collaborations.

ABOUT the candidates and selection process

The post-doctoral fellows will be expected to cross disciplinary boundaries to perform first class research on the management of errors in organizations. Researchers holding a PhD in any relevant discipline are welcome to apply, provided their research programme directly addresses the topic of the Chair. Examples of fields of studies that could be drawn upon include: sense-making, organizational attention, organization design, organizational learning, entrepreneurship and innovation, information systems, risk management, systems design, impact assessment, corporate governance, operations management, complexity, international expansion, cognitive biases and many more.

While it is entirely the responsibility of the research team to develop the research methodology and agenda, illustrative streams of analysis might include:

• Definition of errors, recognizing that decisions in any environment imply trade-offs and that information is incomplete;
• Detection of errors, by third parties (governance or regulation bodies) or the decision makers themselves;
• Management of errors, to build a robust analytical framework based, a.o., on real life cases.

Appointments are for three years, followed by a two 2-years contract (hence, 3+2), depending on evaluations, starting as early as possible between October 2013 and February 2014.

In addition to the quality of the research proposal, applicants should demonstrate their ability to publish in internationally recognized peer-review journals. The ability to work closely with organizations and conduct case studies will also be assessed. Next to a convincing theoretical outline and research design, the proposal should include a plan for the diffusion of findings to both academics and practitioners. For instance, diffusion efforts could involve the organization of international workshops or the preparation of innovative course material.

An international scientific committee will select the candidates on the basis of following criteria: quality of the research project, scientific publications, commitment, international experience, and networking capabilities.

To apply, send a cover letter, full CV and research proposal (maximum 5 pages) to Prof. Carine Peeters.

The deadline for sending the application material is August 30, 2013.

Shortlisted candidates will be invited for an interview at the end of September 2013.