PhD defence Carla Schmitt

"How to be Strategic: Causal Models and Data as Strategic Resources"

This PhD thesis examines how firms make important long-term strategic decisions in uncertain and complex environments, and how data and artificial intelligence (AI) can support these decisions. Strategic decisions are difficult because their outcomes are hard to predict, depend on many interacting factors, and are shaped by how decision makers understand cause-and-effect relationships. The thesis argues that effective decision-making relies not only on identifying patterns in data, but on understanding what actions actually cause desired outcomes.

The research shows that many widely used data and AI tools are good at finding correlations but are less suited to answering causal questions that managers care about in practice. To address this gap, the thesis studies how causal reasoning can be better integrated into data-driven decision-making. It combines interviews, surveys, experiments, and economic modeling to show how causal modeling improves strategic decisions and helps firms use data and AI more effectively. Overall, the thesis highlights the importance of causal understanding for improving both managerial decisions and competitive outcomes.

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