Master Seminar Information Systems “Digitalization in Business and Society”

With the ongoing digitalisation in business and society, an ever-increasing proportion of our daily lives is taking place in digital environments. More and more individuals shop online, consume news and media using their smartphones and even track their health status using smart wearables. This ubiquity of digital technology opens the door for novel approaches to steer human behaviour.

One such approach is digital nudging. It builds upon the concept of nudging which describes adjustments in decision environments that aim to influence people’s judgment, choice or behaviour in a predictable way, helping them to overcome their lack of self-control. Digital nudging extends this analog approach by using information technology and communication technology to guide people’s behaviour in digital choice environments. While the central goal of nudging, according to its original definition, is to “make choosers better off, as judged by themselves” (Thaler & Sunstein, 2008, p. 5), the principle has also been increasingly adopted by marketers trying to nudge people into purchasing their products, giving rise to a vivid ethical debate about nudging.

Objectives

The aim of this seminar is investigate the concept of digital nudging. For this purpose, students are working in a team and should answer a given research question in the field of digital nudging. Each team will design its own experiment, conduct an online survey and analyse the collected data.
Finally, each team will write one seminar paper and present the results to the other participants of the course.

Organization

The seminar is organized as a block seminar. Please note that attendance is mandatory. In case of absence, you will be excluded from the whole seminar and your admission to this seminar expires.
The seminar language is English. This means that the seminar papers must be written in English and the seminar lectures are given in English.
The evaluation of the module performance is composed as follows:

• 67 percent on the written output
• 33 percent on oral performance (lecture, oral participation in discussions and moderation)

In order to pass the seminar, both partial performances must be passed.
The seminar is offered in cooperation with the Chair for Digital Transformation.

Agenda