Framing employment research using behavioural science

Abstract

The main aim of this thesis is to explore the structured use of behavioural science in helping to frame employment research. This structured framing intended to help stimulate more interdisciplinary interaction between sub-disciplines that study employment and behavioural science, setting out new empirical and theoretical applications to the study of employment decision-making. Firstly, the application of specific behavioural science concepts to employment scenarios, structured around the core facets of behavioural science, introducing the types of bias studied in behavioural science in turn. These core facets are cognitive and social biases, risk preferences and biases, time preferences and biases. These were combined with illustrative examples of how these biases might affect employment decision-making. The employment cycle is then used to demonstrate how the concepts in behavioural science may play out across a range of employment scenarios, unearthing potential theoretical and empirical applications. A behavioural science framing was then used to investigate factors related to the addition or omission of low rated journal publications in the assessment of academic resumes. The results of these investigations showed that low rated journal publications are still of some value, albeit journal ratings play a crucial role. Importantly, the extent to which additional low rated journal publications are valued could depend on unconscious social biases that are based on prior expectations, potentially dictated by organizational and ideological learning over time. The empirical work presented data collected from 1,011 psychology and management faculty based at U.K. and U.S.A. universities. The data was collected using an online randomized control trial survey experiment designed to test the assessment of publication records on academic resumes. Only faculty at levels likely to be involved in academic appointment panels and reviewing academic resumes were contacted to take part.