ION Management Science Lab

The ION Management Science Lab (IMSL) aims to advance basic research in management science developing interdisciplinary research programs characterized by the highest international standards of methodological rigor and relevance. Additionally, it seeks to create an environment that fosters the dissemination of scientific knowledge and its application across various industries and organizational contexts.

About

The IMSL is a research organization that conducts basic and applied research on strategic decision-making and the evolution of firms.

Its interdisciplinary research aims to:
1. Investigating real-time decision processes within organizations.
2. Influencing how organizations make complex decisions with economic, social, and environmental sustainability considerations.

IMSL’s research outputs comprise actionable knowledge in the form of publications, data, solutions and technologies.

Vision

The IMSL a world-leading research organization specializing in both basic and applied research on the evolution of firms in the 21st century, underpinned by four interdependent pillars.
These four pillars collectively form the foundation for the IMSL's comprehensive research efforts in understanding and shaping the trajectory of modern businesses.

Digitalization
A customer-centered perspective
Scientific decision-making
Flexible organizational structures

Mission

To establish itself as one of the world's premier research centers in Management Science, delivering cutting-edge and impactful knowledge for application by organizations and educational institutions globally.

This vision encompasses maintaining the largest and most distinctive research database, fostering partnerships with a wide array of firms, and drawing in a vast network of top international scholars.

Activities

Foundations

Theory-based view of strategy

In the digital era, the source of competitive advantage is grounded on how managers make low-frequency/high-impact decisions under uncertainty.

This means they must be good at identifying and solving decision problems that are “visions for the future” or represent significant performance improvements.

Better decision-making implies reducing decision errors and improving the quality of decisions. The “scientific approach” to decision-making is a proven method to reduce decision errors and improve decision quality. It consists in using theories and experiments to engender better beliefs about future states and base managerial decisions on them.

Verticals

1. Capital Structure Strategy
Capital structure decisions are low-frequency/high-impact decisions that are often made without specific data. Strategists find it difficult to make capital structure decisions aligned with their purpose and supportive of their business strategy.
IMSL studies these decisions, how they affect firms’ performance, their relationships with the competitive strategy and the evolution of the financial service industry, in particular the rise of private capital (private equity, venture capital and private debt).
2. Innovation Strategy
Innovation decisions are low-frequency/high-impact decisions that can’t coast on existing data. They concern the envisioning of new markets and technologies. IMSL studies these decisions, how the application of the scientific approach (theories and experiments) can improve them, and how the availability of data shapes the creation of new markets and technologies, in particular the rise of machine learning and generative AI.
3. Human Capital Strategy
CEO successions, top management or other key human capital hiring decisions are low-frequency/high-impact decisions that are highly uncertain and have wide performance effect variation. IMSL investigates the role of theories and experiments in framing and making such decisions, highlighting the interdependence between theories about the future of the firm and theories about the CEO, top management team or other key human capital. Board of Directors and key human capital match in ways that can contribute to the design and implementation of theories thus contributing to knowledge growth.
4. M&A & Alliances
M&As are low-frequency/high-impact decisions that firms make based on assumptions. IMSL studies these decisions as grounded in “theories-of-value” that explain how and why firms source and select specific sets of target firms. We conjecture that M&As have better performance the more decision-makers can develop and articulate a theory about how business combinations will create value in the future.

Output

Insights developed within the Lab are shared through publications, articles, and events, bridging academic research and real-world application.

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People

Our research team is a dynamic group of international researchers filled with ideas and enthusiasm, prepared to take on innovative challenges and drive forward our mission.

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