IIMA - Course Catalogue
Courses
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Programme
PGP
Term
V
Academic Year
2021-22
Course title
People Analytics
Area
Human Resource Management
Credits
1.00
Instructor(s)
Prof. Aditya Christopher Moses
Course Description & Objectives
Introduction:
Course content:
Strategy is about understanding the drivers of firm performance. This course continues the discussion from the core courses you have already attended -- but focuses on internal, managerial and organizational factors affecting strategic success. In particular, this course is about the human capital determinants of firm performance.
At the cutting edge of business and innovation, both new ideas and their execution depend critically on strategic human capital. Elite consulting firms like McKinsey or Bain, technology firms like Google, Amazon and Facebook, or finance companies like Goldman Sachs are at the forefront of investing heavily in human capital as a source of competitive advantage. People analytics human capital and how people analytics can be used as a strategic tool in a variety of settings.
These companies utilize analytical strategies to sharpen personnel management -- a set of strategies and technology called people analytics. This course is about human capital as a source of strategic advantage, and how companies, consultants, executives, bankers and technologists can harness empirical data to entrench and grow their advantage.
The course also focuses on how people analytics relate to competitive advantage, i.e. the strategy, of a firm and industry. We will examine industry and organizational features and focus on personnel strategies for firms based on their competitive advantage.
An important part of this course is the responsible and ethical use of these new technologies. The use of data in personnel decision-making raises questions about privacy, algorithmic bias, self-fulfilling prophecies and social impact. Blindness towards these issues not only raises ethical questions, but can also destroy shareholder value and side-line careers.
Objectives:
Student will learn to:
● Design a personnel strategy from scratch for an example company. Make prescriptions for personnel strategy based on a firm’s competitive setting and its source of competitive advantage.
● Design interventions and collect data to evaluate and test hypotheses about people and workforce strategies.
● Solicit and respond to employee input and preference data in a sophisticated way.
● Assess black-box algorithms for quality, effectiveness and bias.
● Demonstrate awareness of legal, ethical and compliance aspects of collecting and utilizing data in a workforce setting.
Pedagogy
Learning in our course will occur primarily through discussion of cases and articles. Understanding of advanced analytic methods beyond the core is not necessary. A small number of data assignments can be completed in Excel or using other software.