Sebastian Hafenbrädl

Associate Professor of Managing People in Organizations

• Ph.D. in Management, University of Lausanne, HEC

Sebastian Hafenbrädl is Associate Professor in the Managing People in Organizations Department. He holds a Ph.D. in Management from the Faculty of Business and Economics (HEC) at the University of Lausanne and a diploma in Technology and Management from the Technical University of Munich. Prior to joining IESE Business School, he completed his post-doctoral research at the School of Management at Yale University.

At the forefront of his research, lies the broad question of how people, and especially managers, make decisions, and how we can support and empower them to make better decisions. Not just better for themselves, but also for those affected by the outcomes, the organizations they operate within, and for society as a whole. This requires an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on the intersection of psychology, management, and economics, taking into account that people are embedded in groups, organizations, and societies with their economic and political systems, and that their decisions shape and are shaped by people’s social environments and by institutional forces.

His research appears in leading academic journals including, among others, Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, Journal of Business Research, Nature Human Behavior, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), and Science Advances.

Areas of interest.

• Judgment and Decision making
• Behavioral Economics
• Organizational Behavior
• Leadership
• Business Ethics
• Institutional Logics

Publications

Journal Articles (refereed)

KANNGIESSER, P., SUNDERARAJAN, J., HAFENBRÄDL, S., WOIKE, J. K. (2024). Children sustain cooperation in a threshold public goods game even when seeing others’ outcomes. PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE, 35 (10), 1094-1107. doi:10.1177/09567976241267854. ZICKFELD, J. H., ŚCIGAŁA, K. A., ELBAEK, C. T., MICHAEL, J., TØNNESEN, M. H., LEVY, G., AYAL, S., THIELMANN, I., NOCKUR, L., PEER, E., CAPRARO, V., BARKAN, R., BØ, S., BAHNÍK, Š., NOSENZO, D., HERTWIG, R., MAZAR, N., WEISS, A., KOESSLER, A.-K., MONTAL-ROSENBERG, R., HAFENBRÄDL, S., NIELSEN, Y. A., KANNGIESSER, P., SCHINDLER, S., GERLACH, P., KÖBIS, N., JACQUEMET, N., VRANKA, M., ARIELY, D., BIN MARTUZA, J., FELDMAN, Y., BIAŁEK, M., WOIKE, J. K., RAHWAN, Z., SEIDL, A., CHOU, E., KAJACKAITE, A., SCHUDY, S., GLOGOWSKY, U., CZARNA, A. Z., PFATTHEICHER, S., ... MITKIDIS, P. (2024). Effectiveness of ex ante honesty oaths in reducing dishonesty depends on content. Nature Human Behavior. (Online first) LIPPERT, S., DREBER, A., JOHANNESSON, M., TIERNEY, W., CYRUS-LAI, W., UHLMANN, E. L., EMOTION EXPRESSION COLLABORATION, ... PFEIFFER, T. (2024). Can large language models help predict results from a complex behavioural science study? Royal Society Open Science, 11 (9), article 240682. doi:10.1098/rsos.240682.

Proceedings

WAEGER, D., HAFENBRÄDL, S. (2020). An agenda setting model of stakeholder influence. Annual Meeting Proceedings: Virtual 2020. Academy of Management Proceedings.

Book Chapters

CHUGHTAI, M. S., HAFENBRÄDL, S. (2025). Organizational theory and managing employees in learning organizations. In Bari, Muhammad Waseem & Di Virgilio, Francesca (Eds.), Handbook of talent management and learning organizations: a post-pandemic perspective. CRC Press. HOFFRAGE, U., HAFENBRÄDL, S., MAREWSKI, J. (2018). The Fast-and-Frugal Heuristics Program. In Linden J. Ball, Valerie A. Thompson (Eds.), International Handbook of Thinking And Reasoning (pp. 325 - 345). Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. HOFFRAGE, U., HAFENBRÄDL, S. (2016). Cognitive Illusions. In Harold L. Miller, Jr. (Eds.), The SAGE Encyclopedia of Theory in Psychology (pp. 148 - 151). Chicago: Sage Publications.

Non-refereed articles

HAFENBRÄDL, S., WAEGER, D. (2018). Most Executives Believe in the Business Case for CSR. So Why Don't They Invest More in It? Harvard Business Review Digital Articles.

Cases

MORENO-SALAMANCA, A., HAFENBRÄDL, S. (2025). From plates to protests: A leadership crisis in ceramics of Andalucia. IESE, DPO-908-E.

Outputs in other media

HAFENBRÄDL, S. (2025). You vow you’re telling the truth on taxes. But do honesty oaths work? Forbes. HAFENBRÄDL, S. (2020). Über Wahrscheinlichkeiten und Prozentsätze in Zeiten von Corona. ZPA. HAFENBRÄDL, S., WOIKE, J. K. (2020). Why ranking staff leads to destructive competition among colleagues. People Management.