Media Releases

UofT’s Rotman School of Management part of research group to support new U.S. government initiative on behaviourial science

September 16, 2015

Toron­to, ON – Yes­ter­day, it was announced by the White House that U.S. Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma signed an Exec­u­tive Order that directs Fed­er­al agen­cies to use behav­iour­al sci­ence insights in their work. Includ­ed in the announce­ment was that the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toronto’s Rot­man School of Man­age­ment would be the only Cana­di­an insti­tu­tion to join in the “Behav­ioral Sci­ence and Pol­i­cy Series” to devel­op research for the ini­tia­tive. A white paper series will be launched by the Behav­ioral Sci­ence & Pol­i­cy Asso­ci­a­tion (BSPA) with results to be deliv­ered by Sep­tem­ber 2016 which will pro­pose par­tic­u­lar appli­ca­tions of behav­iour­al sci­ence that can be applied, test­ed, and imple­ment­ed at the Fed­er­al lev­el in the near term.

Behav­iour­al sci­ence insights—research insights about how peo­ple make decisions—not only iden­ti­fy aspects of pro­grams that can act as bar­ri­ers to engage­ment, but also pro­vide pol­i­cy­mak­ers with insight into how those bar­ri­ers can be removed through com­mon­sense steps, such as sim­pli­fy­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions and mak­ing choic­es more clear.

The Rot­man School’s par­tic­i­pa­tion will be led by the Rot­man Behav­iour­al Eco­nom­ics in Action (BE@R) team which is coor­di­nat­ed by Prof. Dilip Soman, who holds the Corus Chair in Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Strat­e­gy, and Prof. Nina Mažar and includes con­tri­bu­tions from sev­er­al fac­ul­ty mem­bers in the mar­ket­ing and orga­ni­za­tion­al behav­iour and human resource man­age­ment areas.  This research hub part­ners with non-for-prof­it orga­ni­za­tions and gov­ern­men­tal agen­cies to use the find­ings from research in behav­iour­al sci­ence and apply them to solve prob­lems such as finan­cial lit­er­a­cy, obe­si­ty, and fraud.

The Rot­man School of Man­age­ment is locat­ed in the heart of Canada’s com­mer­cial and cul­tur­al cap­i­tal and is part of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to, one of the world’s top 20 research uni­ver­si­ties. The Rot­man School fos­ters a new way to think that enables our grad­u­ates to tack­le today’s glob­al busi­ness chal­lenges.  For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it www.rotman.utoronto.ca.

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For more infor­ma­tion:

Ken McGuf­fin
Man­ag­er, Media Rela­tions
Rot­man School of Man­age­ment
Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to
Voice 416.946.3818
E‑mail mcguffin@rotman.utoronto.ca
Fol­low Rot­man on Twit­ter @rotmanschool
Watch Rot­man on You Tube www.youtube.com/rotmanschool