GRK 2739:  KD²School – Designing Adaptive Systems for Economic Decisions

• Subject Area: Economics
• Term: since 2021
• Website: Homepage
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 447089431

Economic decisions in business and in everyday life are increasingly supported by IT-based systems. As a result, these systems effectively operate as “cast in code” institutions and processes, and their design influences decision makers’ interactions and behaviors. The interplay between economic decision making and system design is at the core of the proposed KD²School as it lays the foundations for the transformation of static systems into dynamic, adaptive systems. Generally speaking, all decision making is inherently embedded in a dynamically changing context comprising of personal (e.g., stress), task-related (e.g., complexity), and environmental factors (e.g., incentives). The design of effective decision support systems hence requires, first and foremost, that the underlying decision contexts are adequately measured and understood by leveraging various data sources to their full potential. The key challenge then is to utilize this data and design economic institutions and their IT realizations to dynamically adapt to the context of a decision situation with the goal of improving decisions and/or reducing effort without loss of decision quality. Thus, as a publicly sponsored and neutrally coordinated program, the KD²School opens up a research field that is at present primarily “investigated” with profit-oriented (e.g. Google) or political (e.g. China) goals. With its main topic Designing adaptive, IT-based systems for supporting economic decision making the research program focuses on (i) technical and neuroscientific cross-sectional topics, (ii) individual decisions in everyday life, (iii) decision making in digital team work environments, (iv) group decisions in online participation, and (v) the boundaries of adaptation. As basis for this research, the KD²School provides an excellent infrastructure of five complementary laboratories. The technical integration of these laboratories across three locations will be unique worldwide and promises highly innovative research, both in terms of topics and methodology. PhD students and Post-Docs will benefit from an innovative qualification and supervision concept and an extraordinary international network that will provide them with an interdisciplinary knowledge base and research skills to understand context-sensitive decision processes and to design appropriate adaptive IT-based systems. These competences and skills will qualify them for both the academic and the industry job market.

• DFG Programme: Research Training Groups
• Applicant Institution: Karlsruher Institut für Technologie
• Participating Institution: Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen; Universität Bremen
• Spokesperson: Professor Dr. Christof Weinhardt
• Participating Researchers: Professor Dr. Michael Beigl; Professor Dr. Ulrich Ebner-Priemer; Professor Dr. Manfred Herrmann; Professor Dr. Martin Klarmann; Professor Dr. Alexander Mädche; Professorin Dr. Petra Nieken; Professorin Dr. Jella Pfeiffer; Professor Dr. Clemens Puppe; Professor Dr. Benjamin Scheibehenne; Professorin Dr.-Ing. Tanja Schultz; Professorin Dr. Nora Szech (†)