BEAR x BIOrg Webinar Series
Join our monthly live webinar sessions by speakers from the world of behavioural insights.
BI-ORG NEWS
New BI Org edited book “Cash Transfers for Inclusive Societies”
The latest title in the Behaviourally Informed Organizations series offers practical advice on how best to successfully design, deliver, and evaluate efficient cash transfer programs, with a view to alleviating poverty.
Read an excerpt from the book here.
Cash Transfers for Inclusive Societies is co-edited by BI-Org partners Jiaying Zhao (U. British Columbia), Saugato Datta (ideas42) and Dilip Soman (U. Toronto).
Banking on Behavioural Science: Commonwealth Bank of Australia (A case study)
"Like many, the CBA story is neither simple nor linear. Starting out as an experiment of its own, at a time when applied behavioural science was new, and through various hype cycles and false starts, the team has reinvented, reshaped, and carved out a strong international reputation."
Read our new case study to learn more about the journey of one of our BI Org Partners, Commonwealth Bank of Australia's Behavioural Science Unit, to successfully embedding behavioural science into its DNA.
ABOUT THE PARTNERSHIP
Every organization is fundamentally in the business of behaviour change.
Whether it be a government trying to get business to comply with environmental regulation, a business trying to get its customers to be loyal to their products, or a financial advisor encouraging a client to start saving for retirement, behavior change is critical to organizational success. Despite its centrality to organizations, we do not have a good scientific framework for behaviour change, nor a good understanding of how organizations can embed insights from behavioural science into their operations.
Our Challenge
Our key challenge is to develop an overarching framework for using behavioural science. We ask; how can behavioural insights (BI) best be embedded in organizations to achieve better outcomes, improve the efficiency of processes, and maximize stakeholder engagement?
Our team brings together researchers from 25 universities and 5 non-academic organizations, and 20 partner organizations that include government units, for-profit entities, consulting firms, consumer groups, and academic centres.
The proposed partnership comes at a potentially transformative time for the field – BI has developed expertise in large-scale field experimentation and big-data analytics. Governments and businesses have been attracted to BI with its promise of developing human-centricity and efficient solutions, and a recent Nobel Prize in Economics to Richard Thaler (a key proponent of applied BI) has captures the imagination and spurred interest. The partnership approach allows us to build theory based on practical problems, and to test and refine them in field settings that have practical implications for our partners, for society, and for knowledge development.
Three Themes
Our overarching research question will be tackled in three themes with the goals of 1) developing a comprehensive framework of behaviour change; 2) extending and applying this framework to complex behavior change challenges (business and social); and 3) identifying mechanisms (resources, capabilities, and operating models) by which organizations can best deliver on the promise of BI.
We plan to use a spectrum of research methods (both qualitative and quantitative) to achieve this objective, and aim to produce outputs that include scholarly writing (e.g., journal articles, books, monographs), practitioner oriented materials (e.g., white papers, academic-practitioner conferences, guidebooks), and tools for consumers and citizens (e.g., tip-sheets, decision aides, podcasts).
We expect this partnership to make contributions to policy innovation, business excellence, and the science of behaviour change. By developing a framework for using behavioural science, this partnership aims to place Canada at the forefront of the growing and potentially impactful BI community worldwide.
The Players
CORE TEAM
The core team is based in the Behavioural Economics in Action at Rotman (BEAR) research centre at the University of Toronto.
RESEARCHERS
A team of 25 faculty researchers (from across Canada, the U.S., and internationally) lead the partnership’s research agenda.
PARTNERS
A group of 20 partner organizations (government, industry, and other professional and academic organizations) have committed resources to ensure success of the partnership.
Contact Us
www.biorgpartnership.com
Email: rotmanbiorg@rotman.utoronto.ca
Twitter: @UofT_BEAR
The Behaviourally Informed Organizations Partnership is hosted by the BEAR research centre at the University of Toronto.
