Bo Cowgill
Assistant Professor of Business Administration
Why this course
People analytics can give businesses a competitive advantage, but the social impacts are not yet well understood. Professor Cowgill explores the promise of machine-based learning and algorithmic decision-making, while also analyzing its broader ethical and social impacts
This course equips next generation business managers with the skills necessary to implement new technology and data-driven analytics, and with the understanding of the responsibility and impact that comes with implementation
Course Highlights
Learning Objectives
Student will learn to:
Design a personnel strategy from scratch for an example company. Make prescriptions for personnel strategy based on a firm’s competitive setting and its source of competitive advantage
Design interventions and collect data to evaluate and test hypotheses about people and workforce strategies
Solicit and respond to employee input and preference data in a sophisticated way
Assess black-box algorithms for quality, effectiveness and bias
Demonstrate awareness of legal, ethical and compliance aspects of collecting and utilizing data in a workforce setting
Highlights from resource list
Bernstein, E. S., & Marton, S. (2017). Sensing (and Monetizing) Happiness at Hitachi. HBS No. 418-019. Boston, MA: Harvard business School Publishing.
Bryan, Lowell L., et al. “Making a Market in Talent.” McKinsey & Company, 2006, www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/making-a-market-in-talent.
Waber, Ben. “The Happy Tracked Employee.” Harvard Business Review, 18 Oct. 2018, hbr.org/2018/09/the-happy-tracked-employee.
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Biography
I am an Assistant Professor at Columbia Business School, a research affiliate at CESifo and a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations. I received my Ph.D. from UC Berkeley, and won the Kauffman Junior Faculty Fellowship, the Robert Beyster Fellowship, and the CESifo Prize. My research has been published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Review of Economic Studies and Management Science, and has been covered in popular outlets such as the New York Times and Harvard Business Review. My research interests are in applied microeconomics and strategy, particularly productivity, technological innovation, organizational economics and platforms.