NHH Norwegian School of Economics
Associate Professor of Business Economics
My research sits where ethics and profitability meet. Using experiments, I study how people and organisations handle ethical trade-offs, and how values, social norms and regulation shape their decisions.
I also give talks and workshops for businesses, and co-host Lederskap, NHH's podcast on leadership.
Talks and workshops
The talks are based on research, partly my own. They are solid, but far from dry: expect insight and a few laughs. Each works as a talk or a workshop, tailored to the audience. In Norwegian or English.
Previous audiences include
Where should AI make the decisions, and where should people?
A tool for separating prediction from judgment. Two questions, about goal clarity and separability, place any process in one of four quadrants.
Does doing the right thing pay?
When do ethics and profitability pull in the same direction, and when do they not? Built on my own experiments on values, norms and incentives.
Research
Op-eds and talks
Do we have to choose between control and trust?
Too much trust leaves room for abuse. Too much control stifles motivation. How leaders can manage in a way that builds trust.
Research
On stage
Podcast
NHH's podcast on leadership
Together with Professor Therese Egeland, I invite thoughtful guests to discuss current leadership topics and relevant research. New episodes come out twice a month. The podcast is in Norwegian.
Listen onSpotifyApple PodcastsAcast
In the media
Research
When Norway made searches in public tax records visible to the person searched, looking up others' pay became socially costly. Pay dispersion rose more, by about 3–4 percent, in firms with fewer searches after the reform. How well transparency works depends not only on whether information is available, but on the cost of acquiring it.
Covered in digi.no: «Denne setningen kan ha gitt deg lavere lønn»
Read the paperWhen AI is built into decision systems, it can strengthen good choices, but also scale the consequences of bad ones. The AI Compass defines four ideal-typical roles for AI in different decision processes. Leaders must first diagnose the type of decision, and then choose the role AI should play.
Covered in Finansavisen: «AI-kappløpet – sprint eller orienteringsløp?»
Firms often pursue social responsibility both to do good and to make money. In an experiment, we test whether such mixed motives change how opportunistically employees behave.
Read the paperCV
Contact
Send me an email with the topic, date, place and who the audience is, and I will reply as soon as I can.
Joel.Berge@nhh.no