Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Group Decision Making'

The present work explores improvements in group decision-making. It begins with a practical example using state-of-the-art techniques for a complex, high-risk decision. We show how these techniques can reveal a better alternative. Although we created an improved decision process, decision-makers were apt to protect their own organizations instead of the project. This tendency was reduced over the course of the decision-making process but inspired the first conceptual component of this work. The first concept describes the “Cost of Conflict” that can arise in a group decision, using game theory to represent the non-cooperative approach and comparing the outcome to the cooperative approach. We demonstrate that it is possible for the group to settle on a non-Paretto Nash equilibrium. The sensitivity of the decision-maker weights is revealed which led to the second conceptual portion of this work. The second concept applies social network theory to study the influence between decision-makers in a group decision. By examining the number and strength of connections between decision-makers, we build from intrinsically derived weights to extrinsically derived weights by adding the network influences from other decision-makers. The two conceptual approaches provide a descriptive view of non-cooperative decisions where decision-makers still influence each other. These concepts suggest a prescriptive approach to achieving a higher group utility.

A common theme running throughout the three chapters of this thesis is dynamic recurring group decision making. The first chapter sets up a model with endogenous status-quo (dynamic bargaining model) in which decision makers are uncertain about their own future preferences. The main focus of the chapter is on how different bargaining protocols influence equilibrium decisions. The two protocols considered are i) implicit status-quo bargaining protocol in which present period policy serves as the status-quo for the next period and ii) explicit status-quo bargaining protocol in which the current decision involves both current policy and a possibly different status-quo for the future. The main observation of the chapter is that the former bargaining protocol leads to decisions diverging from the preferences of the actors involved even in the periods in which their preferences coincide, this divergence being driven by the concerns to maintain a bargaining position for the future. The latter bargaining protocol, on the other hand, delivers decisions fully reflecting preferences of the actors involved in the periods when these coincide, but may lead to decisions re ecting only the proposer's preferences. The second chapter shows how to construct equilibria in a class of dy-namic bargaining models in which players have fixed preferences over all the dimensions of a policy space. The construction applies both to one-dimensional and multi-dimensional policy spaces and delivers equilibria with simple and intuitive structure. The chapter works out several examples to show i) the multiplicity of equilibria and ii) the non-monotonicity of the existence of the simple equilibria in the underlying model parameters. The third paper is a collaborative work with Roman Horvath and Katerina Smidkova from the Czech National Bank currently published as a CNB working paper). The chapter analyses decision making in monetary policy committees, the decision making bodies of central banks. On the empirical side, the chapter shows that voting records of monetary policy committees are informative about their own future decisions. On the theoretical side, the chapter shows that the voting records' predictive power can be generated through theoretical models used in the group decision making literature.

In infrastructure planning, identifying ‘the best solution’ out of a given set of alternatives is a context-dependent multi-dimensional multi-stakeholder challenge in which competing criteria must be identified and trade-offs made. In a recent study, colleagues from Institute of Resources, Sustainability and Environment found that there is a need for a visualization tool that enables planners and decision makers to collectively explore individual preferences among those involved in the decision. This thesis concerns designing and evaluating an interactive visualization tool that facilitates group decisions by making the problem analysis more participatory, transparent, and comprehensible. To do so, we extend the interactive visualization tool ValueCharts to create Group ValueCharts. We conducted studies with two different groups to evaluate the effectiveness of Group ValueCharts in group decision-making. The first group was university staff in leading positions in different departments, presently engaged in and responsible for water infrastructure planning. The second group was employees of an analytics company who are involved in buying scientific software licenses. Each group was instructed on how to use the tool in application to their current decision problem. The discussions were audio recorded and the participants were surveyed to evaluate usability. The results indicate that participants felt the tool improved group interaction and information exchange, and made the discussion more participatory. Additionally, the participants strongly concur that the tool reveals disagreements and agreements within the group. These results suggest that Group ValueCharts has the ability to enhance transparency and comprehensibility in group decision-making.
Science, Faculty of
Computer Science, Department of
Graduate

The objective of this experiment was to compare three group decision-making strategies and their effects on the group decision-making process. Two of the strategies, Dialectical Inquiry and Devilâ s Advocacy, were structured while the control condition, Unstructured Consensus Seeking, was non-directed, thus unstructured. The following dependent variables were measured: (a) decision quality, (b) cognitive conflict, (c) affective conflict, and (d) decision commitment. Seventy-two undergraduate participants were randomly assigned across 3 conditions into groups of 6 to solve an interactive group decision task. Thirty-six trained observers were randomly assigned across the same conditions to observe intra-group cognitive and affective conflict and to assess how well the undergraduate participants implemented the structured approaches. The unit of comparison was groups (n = 12). The results of this study were analyzed using analysis of variance and no statistical difference was found between the treatment groups on any of the four dependent variables measured. Cognitive conflict levels and commitment to the decision, while not statistically significant, were higher in the two structured conditions compared to the unstructured control condition. A discussion of these results along with directions for future research is provided.
Ph. D.

The three chapters of this thesis investigate social aspects of judgment and decision making. Chapter One analyses the consequences of making decisions based on predictions of future well-being, and the conditions under which advice can improve these decisions. It shows that an interaction between errors in affective forecasts and the choice process leads to suboptimal decisions and disappointment, and establishes conditions under which advice reduces these effects. The second chapter investigates the boundaries of the result that eliciting more than one estimate from the same person and averaging these can lead to accuracy gains in judgment tasks. It reveals that the technique works only for specific kinds of questions, and people are reluctant to average their initial answers when asked for a final estimate. Finally, Chapter Three reviews experimental results regarding individual and small group behaviour in strategic decision tasks and provides a theoretical framework to analyse the observed differences.
Aquesta tesi investiga diferents aspectes socials de la presa de decisions. El primer capítol analitza les decisions preses en base a les prediccions del benestar futur, i en quines situacions els consells d’altres persones poden millorar aquestes decisions. Es mostra que una interacció entre el procés de l’elecció i les imperfeccions de les prediccions condueix a decisions subòptimes i a la decepció, i s’estableixen les condicions sota les quals els consells redueixen aquests efectes. El segon capítol investigaels casos en què les persones poden millorar les seves prediccions numèriques donant més d’una estimació i prenent-ne la mitjana. A base d’un experiment, es mostra que la tècnica funciona només amb determinats tipus de preguntes, i que les persones són averses a prendre mitjanes de les seves estimacions inicials quan es pregunta per una estimació final. L’últim capítol revisa els resultats experimentals referents a la presa de decisions estratègiques de la persona individual comparats amb els de la persona que forma part d’un grup reduït i proporciona un marc teòric en el que analitza les diferències que s’observen en el seu comportament

Economic theory traditionally explains choice under risk through the preferences of the individual, yet many important economic decisions are made by groups. To increase our understanding of the implications of group decisions and enrich our theories accordingly, we need empirical and experimental evidence on groups. Although economists have conducted controlled laboratory experiments on individual choice for many decades, only recently have researchers begun to use the experimental method to study group decisions under risk. This thesis contributes to the study of group decision making under risk by providing a cross-disciplinary review of the growing literature on this topic, followed by three experiments on risk-taking by groups. The first experiment investigates the role of communication and peer effects, the second experiment investigates group composition, and the final experiment focuses on information sharing in groups.

Com a individus, definim les nostres identitats de grup mitjançant la categorització dels altres individus i de nosaltres mateixos en moltes categories socials com la de gènere, raça, religió, nacionalitat, conviccions polítiques i professió, entre moltes altres. Aquest procés de categorització ens confereix una noció de "qui" som, a quins grups socials pertanyem i, el que és més important, com s'espera que ens comportem. Aquesta tesi gira entorn a dos fenòmens d'especial rellevància en la literatura sobre la identitat de grup; la discriminació i els conflictes intergrupals. La identitat de grup es considera un factor subjacent de les conductes discriminatòries i l'aparició de conflictes entre membres de diferents grups socials. Hi ha una àmplia evidència que mostra que la mera categorització en categories socials és suficient per desencadenar conductes discriminatòries contra membres d'altres grups socials. A més, la història de la humanitat ofereix molts exemples de conflictes i genocidis més arrelats en la diversitat d'identitats de grup que en les disputes econòmiques. No obstant això, no tots els membres d'un grup social discriminen en la mateixa magnitud, ni tots els grups socials estan involucrats en conflictes. El primer treball d'aquesta tesi proposa una mesura empírica que va més enllà de la categorització dels individus en categories socials. Utilitzant la voluntat d'adquirir béns representatius de grups socials, aquest article mesura i quantifica la intensitat de la identitat de grup per investigar els factors que reforcen i atenuen la identitat de grup dels individus. Els resultats proporcionen evidència sobre com la convergència i divergència en els comportaments de membres d'un grup social reforcen i atenuen la intensitat de la identitat de grup dels individus, la qual cosa és crucial per predir l'aparició de conflictes intergrupals a nivell col·lectiu i forts graus de discriminació a nivell individual. La literatura que estudia els efectes de la identitat de grup en la presa de decisions individuals s'ha centrat principalment en estudiar la discriminació i els conflictes intergrupals assumint que la identitat de grup dels individus és coneguda i observable. No obstant això, moltes identitats de grup es basen en conviccions i creences que no són directament observables a partir dels trets físics dels individus i, per tant, poden ser incertes (per exemple, la religió i la ideologia). El segon treball presentat en aquesta tesi explora els efectes de la incertesa de la identitat de grup sobre els patrons de discriminació quan els individus decideixen amb qui interactuar, i les seves repercussions en l'eficiència de la coordinació col·lectiva. La gestió de la diversitat i incertesa de les identitats de grup és un factor important per determinar els guanys i l'èxit de les organitzacions i empreses, especialment quan la força laboral és diversa i pot tenir dificultats de coordinació i cooperació. Els resultats trobats en el segon treball mostren el paper que juga la incertesa de la identitat de grup en les preferències d'interacció dels individus i ofereixen diverses idees gerencials per dissuadir la discriminació entre els empleats alhora d’interactuar i augmentar la seva eficiència de coordinació quan treballen en equip. Finalment, l'últim treball presentat en aquesta tesi contribueix a la literatura de polítiques i intervencions orientades a mitigar la discriminació i els prejudicis entre membres de grups socials en conflicte. Si bé aquesta literatura s'ha centrat en estudiar com el contacte entre membres de diferents grups socials redueix la discriminació i els prejudicis, hi ha una manca d'evidència sobre intervencions amb les mateixes finalitats que no requereixin contacte entre individus. L'últim treball presentat en aquesta tesi explota un context natural en què els individus de dos grups socials actualment en conflicte es veuen obligats a cooperar per aconseguir un objectiu comú superior sense poder posar-se en contacte. Aquest context ofereix l'oportunitat de posar l'èmfasi no en el contacte entre individus sinó en els objectius comuns superiors com a factor atenuant de la discriminació. Els resultats mostren que els individus es van tornar més egoistes a mesura que s'aconseguia gradualment l'objectiu comú superior. A més, els individus d'un grup social en particular també van augmentar la seva discriminació a mesura que s'aconseguia gradualment l'objectiu comú. Aquests resultats mostren com els objectius comuns superiors poden esdevenir un factor mitigador de la discriminació i l'egoisme.
Como individuos, definimos nuestras identidades grupales mediante la categorización de los demás individuos y de nosotros mismos en muchas categorías sociales como la de género, raza, religión, nacionalidad, convicciones políticas y profesión, entre muchas otras. Este proceso de categorización nos confiere una noción de "quiénes" somos, a qué grupos sociales pertenecemos y, lo que es más importante, cómo se espera que nos comportemos. Esta tesis gira en torno a dos fenómenos de especial relevancia en la literatura sobre identidad grupal; la discriminación y los conflictos intergrupales. La identidad grupal se considera un factor subyacente de las conductas discriminatorias y la aparición de conflictos entre miembros de distintos grupos sociales. Existe una amplia evidencia que muestra que la mera categorización en categorías sociales es suficiente para desencadenar la discriminación contra miembros de otros grupos sociales. Además, la historia de la humanidad ofrece muchos ejemplos de conflictos y genocidios más arraigados en la diversidad de identidades grupales que en las disputas económicas. Sin embargo, no todos los miembros de un grupo social discriminan en la misma magnitud, ni todos los grupos sociales están involucrados en conflictos. El primer trabajo de esta tesis propone una medida empírica que va más allá de la categorización de los individuos en categorías sociales. Utilizando la voluntad de adquirir bienes representativos de grupos sociales, este artículo mide y cuantifica la intensidad de la identidad grupal para investigar los factores que refuerzan y atenúan la identidad grupal de los individuos. Los resultados encontrados proporcionan evidencia sobre cómo la convergencia y divergencia en los comportamientos de miembros de un grupo social refuerzan y atenúan la intensidad de la identidad grupal de los individuos, lo cual es crucial para predecir la aparición de conflictos intergrupales a nivel colectivo y fuertes grados de discriminación a nivel individual. La literatura que estudia los efectos de la identidad grupal en la toma de decisiones individuales se ha centrado principalmente en estudiar la discriminación y los conflictos intergrupales asumiendo que la identidad grupal de los individuos es conocida y observable. Sin embargo, muchas identidades grupales se basan en convicciones y creencias que no son directamente observables a partir de los rasgos físicos individuales y, por lo tanto, pueden ser inciertas (por ejemplo, la religión y la ideología). El segundo trabajo presentado en esta tesis explora los efectos de la incertidumbre de la identidad grupal sobre los patrones de discriminación cuando los individuos deciden con quién interactuar, y sus repercusiones en la eficiencia de la coordinación colectiva. La gestión de la diversidad e incertidumbre de las identidades grupales es un factor importante para determinar las ganancias y el éxito de las organizaciones y empresas, especialmente cuando la fuerza laboral es diversa y puede tener dificultades para coordinarse y cooperar. Los resultados encontrados en el segundo trabajo arrojan luz sobre el papel que juega la incertidumbre de la identidad grupal en las preferencias de interacción de los individuos y ofrecen varias ideas gerenciales para disuadir la discriminación entre los empleados para interactuar y aumentar su eficiencia de coordinación cuando trabajan en equipo. Finalmente, el último trabajo presentado en esta tesis contribuye a la literatura de políticas e intervenciones orientadas a mitigar la discriminación y los prejuicios entre miembros de grupos sociales en conflicto. Si bien esta literatura se ha centrado en estudiar cómo el contacto entre miembros de diferentes grupos sociales reduce la discriminación y los prejuicios, existe una falta de evidencia sobre intervenciones con los mismos fines que no requieran contacto entre individuos. El último trabajo presentado en esta tesis explota un contexto natural en el que los individuos de dos grupos sociales actualmente en conflicto se ven obligados a cooperar para lograr un objetivo común superior sin poder ponerse en contacto. Este contexto ofrece la oportunidad de poner el énfasis no en el contacto entre individuos sino en los objetivos comunes superiores como factor atenuante de la discriminación. Los resultados muestran que los individuos se volvieron más egoístas a medida que se lograba gradualmente el objetivo común superior. Además, los individuos de un grupo social en particular también aumentaron su discriminación a medida que se lograba gradualmente el objetivo común. Estos resultados muestran como los objetivos comunes superiores pueden mitigar la discriminación y el egoísmo.
As individuals, we define our group identities by categorizing others and ourselves into many social categories like gender, race, religion, nationality, political convictions, and profession, among many others. This categorization process confers us a notion of “who” we are, which social groups we belong, and more importantly, how we are expected to behave. This thesis revolves around two phenomena at the core of group identity literature; discrimination and intergroup conflicts. Group identity is considered an underlying factor of discriminatory behaviors and the emergence of conflicts between members of social groups. There is extensive evidence showing that the mere categorization into social categories is enough to trigger discrimination against members of other social groups. Moreover, human history provides many examples of conflicts and genocides rooted in group identity diversity more than in economic disputes. However, not all social group members discriminate in the same magnitude, nor all social groups are involved in conflicts. The first paper of this thesis proposes an empirical measure that goes beyond categorizing individuals into social categories. Using willingness to acquire representative goods of social groups, this paper measures and quantify group identity intensity to investigate reinforcing and attenuating factors of group identity. The results found provide evidence on how convergence and divergence in behaviors among social group members reinforce and attenuate the group identity intensity of individuals, which is crucial in predicting the emergence of intergroup conflicts at the collective level and strong degrees of discrimination at the individual level. The literature studying the effects of group identity on individual decision-making has largely focused on studying discrimination and intergroup conflicts assuming individuals’ group identity is known and observable. However, many group identities rely on convictions and beliefs that are not directly observable from individual physical traits, and therefore, might be uncertain (e.g. religion, ideology). The second paper presented in this thesis explores the effects of group identity uncertainty on discrimination patterns when individuals decide whom to interact with and its repercussions on collective coordination efficiency. Managing group identity diversity and uncertainty is a major factor in determining organizations and firms' profit and success, especially when a diverse workforce might find it difficult to coordinate and cooperate. The results found in the second paper shed light on the role group identity uncertainty plays in individual interaction preferences and offer several managerial insights for deterring discrimination among employees to interact and increase their coordination efficiency when working in teams. Finally, the last paper presented in this thesis, contributes to the literature of policies and interventions aimed at mitigating discrimination and prejudices between members of social groups in conflict. While this literature has focused on studying how the contact between members of different social groups reduces discrimination and prejudices, there is a lack of evidence on interventions with same purposes not requiring contact between individuals. The last paper presented in this thesis exploits a natural occurring context in which individuals of two social groups currently in conflict see themselves forced to cooperate in order to achieve a superordinate common goal without being able to get in contact. This context offers the opportunity to put the emphasis not in the contact between individuals but in the superordinate common goals as a mitigating factor of discrimination. Results show that individuals got more selfish as the superordinate common goal was gradually achieved. Furthermore, individuals from one social group also increased their discrimination as the common goal was gradually achieved. These results highlight superordinate common goals mitigate discrimination and selfishness.

Thesis (M.S. in Systems Technology)--Naval Postgraduate School, June 1990.
Thesis Advisor(s): Lacer, Donald A. Second Reader: Zviran, Moshe. "June 1990." Description based on title screen as viewed on March 23, 2010. DTIC Identifier(s): Decision Support Systems, Military Procurement, Decision Making. Author(s) subject terms: Acquisition, Group Decision Support System. Includes bibliographical references (p. 64). Also available in print.

Advance directives have proven inadequate as an advance care planning tool, largely because they fail to adequately anticipate and address relevant clinical scenarios. The primary response has been to turn to proxy decision-makers. Under the standard view, proxies are tasked with making the same decisions the patient would have chosen under the circumstances based upon their intimate familiarity with the patient and their wishes. However, it is now well established that proxies fail to accurately replicate decisions, only performing slightly above random chance. Given this, some have suggested that we should give up on advance care planning altogether in favour of alternatives, such as attending to the patient’s best interests. My goal in this thesis is to provide an alternative model of proxy decision making, which I dub the ‘value proxy account’. It proceeds in two parts. In the first part, I argue that the standard view of proxy appointments is mistaken in claiming that knowledge of the patient’s wishes suffices to provide insight into what they would value. Instead, in line with the work of R. M. Veatch, I argue that the only way to have this kind of insight is via the appointment of proxies who share patient values, and value in the same manner as the patient. This allows value proxies to decide based upon their own values, in the knowledge that their decision will respect or further the values of the patient. However, a key problem remains: the individual value proxy remains an individual, with all the problems that this entails. As I show, individual proxies, qua individual reasoners, are beset by myriad biases which invariably influence their decisions beneath the level of conscious awareness. As a corrective, a body of empirical literature suggests that group deliberation, under felicitous conditions, produces better decisions than individual reasoning. This licenses the conclusion that our reasoning capacities are much improved when they are embedded in a dialogical context. I therefore argue that patients, in most cases, would be better served by appointing multiple value proxies who deliberate together to determine what is best, all things considered. My account will demonstrate that, despite the possibility of deadlock, the group value proxy account offers the best model of substitute decision making available.

Thesis (Ph. D.) -- University of Maryland, College Park, 2004.
Thesis research directed by: Government and Politics. Title from t.p. of PDF. Includes bibliographical references. Published by UMI Dissertation Services, Ann Arbor, Mich. Also available in paper.

In this paper, a view of non-compliance in practical healthcare is provided that identifies certain non-compliant behaviours as rational. This view of rational non-compliance is used to update a current form of doctor patient relationships with the aim of reducing non-compliance. In addition to reforming one standard doctor patient relationship model, the normative implications of understanding non-compliance as a rational form of human behaviour are described.

This thesis is about the human ability to share and combine representations of the uncertainty associated with individual beliefs - an ability which is called metacognition and facilitates effective cooperation. We distinguish between two metacognitive representations: an implicit confidence variable for oneself and an explicit confidence report for sharing with others. Using visual psychophysics and computational modelling, we address the issues of optimality and flexibility in the formation and the utilisation of these representations. We show that people can compute the confidence variable in an optimal manner (the probability that a given belief is correct as per Bayesian inference). Further, we show that the mapping of this variable onto a confidence report can vary flexibly - with people adjusting their reports according to the history of reports given and feedback obtained. This optimality and flexibility is important for effective cooperation. Being a probability, the optimal confidence variable can be compared across people. However, to facilitate this comparison, people must adapt their confidence reports to each other and develop a common metric for reporting the probability that their belief is correct. We show that people solve this communication problem sub-optimally; they match each other's mean confidence and confidence distributions, regardless of whether they are equally likely to be correct or not. In addition, we show that, while people can take into account differences in underlying competence to some extent, they fail to do so adequately; they exhibit an equality bias, weighting their partner's beliefs as if they were as good or as bad as their own, regardless of true differences in their underlying competence. More generally, our results pose a problem for our current understanding of metacognition which assumes that confidence reports are stable over time. In addition, our results show that confidence reports are socially malleable, and thus raise the possibility that well-known biases, such as overconfidence, might reflect particular norms for social interaction.

This research was concerned with the collection of empirical data necessary to estimate the effects of decision support tools on the performance of distributed groups. Data was collected in a controlled experimental environment that simulated a geographically-dispersed meeting through the use of videoconferencing and group communication support (GCSS) technology. Results of the use of a Group Decision Support System (GDSS) on group process and outcome variables were mixed. As predicted by the literature the use of a GDSS by distributed groups improved overall group consensus, decision accuracy, and decision effectiveness. The use of a GDSS also increased perceived process structure. Contrary to previous studies, the use of a GDSS increased decision time, and decreased overall satisfaction with the group process. No significant effects were found for perceived consensus, cooperation, amount of information exchange, or confidence in the decision. A strong correlation was found between decision quality and decision time. An even stronger correlation was found between perceived structure of the process and satisfaction with the process. The lack of feedback about the process and its outcomes could explain the lack of a GDSS effect on perceptions of consensus, cooperation, and confidence in the decision. Perception of subjective measures of the process may depend on the presence of the appropriate types of feedback. The results suggest that an increase in structure without a perceived improvement in decision quality (confidence in the decision) tends to reduce group satisfaction. A richer taxonomy for Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) systems is proposed whereby three orthogonal dimensions of group support are defined. These three dimensions of group support are: Communication support, decision support, and presence support. This new taxonomy suggests a number of research directions aimed at the empirical identification of contextual and design factors relevant to distributed group performance and decision making performance in general.
Master of Science

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Michigan State University. Dept. of Telecommunications, Information Studies and Media, 2006.
Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on June 19, 2009) Includes bibliographical references (p. 62-68). Also issued in print.

Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) problems are often associated with tradeoffs between performances of the available alternative solutions under decision making criteria. These problems become more complex when performances are associated with uncertainty. This study proposes a stochastic MCDM procedure that can handle uncertainty in MCDM problems. The proposed method coverts a stochastic MCDM problem into many deterministic ones through a Monte-Carlo (MC) selection. Each deterministic problem is then solved using a range of MCDM methods and the ranking order of the alternatives is established for each deterministic MCDM. The final ranking of the alternatives can be determined based on winning probabilities and ranking distribution of the alternatives. Ranking probability distributions can help the decision-maker understand the risk associated with the overall ranking of the options. Therefore, the final selection of the best alternative can be affected by the risk tolerance of the decision-makers. A Group Decision Support System (GDSS) is developed here with a user-friendly interface to facilitate the application of the proposed MC-MCDM approach in real-world multi-participant decision making for an average user. The GDSS uses a range of decision making methods to increase the robustness of the decision analysis outputs and to help understand the sensitivity of the results to level of cooperation among the decision-makers. The decision analysis methods included in the GDSS are: 1) conventional MCDM methods (Maximin, Lexicographic, TOPSIS, SAW and Dominance), appropriate when there is a high cooperation level among the decision-makers; 2) social choice rules or voting methods (Condorcet Choice, Borda scoring, Plurality, Anti-Plurality, Median Voting, Hare System of voting, Majoritarian Compromise ,and Condorcet Practical), appropriate for cases with medium cooperation level among the decision-makers; and 3) Fallback Bargaining methods (Unanimity, Q-Approval and Fallback Bargaining with Impasse), appropriate for cases with non-cooperative decision-makers. To underline the utility of the proposed method and the developed GDSS in providing valuable insights into real-world hydro-environmental group decision making, the GDSS is applied to a benchmark example, namely the California's Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta decision making problem. The implications of GDSS' outputs (winning probabilities and ranking distributions) are discussed. Findings are compared with those of previous studies, which used other methods to solve this problem, to highlight the sensitivity of the results to the choice of decision analysis methods and/or different cooperation levels among the decision-makers.
M.S.
Masters
Civil, Environmental, and Construction Engineering
Engineering and Computer Science
Civil Engineering; Water Resources Engineering

Thesis (Ph. D.) -- University of Maryland, College Park, 2005.
Thesis research directed by: Communication. Title from t.p. of PDF. Includes bibliographical references. Published by UMI Dissertation Services, Ann Arbor, Mich. Also available in paper.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Economics, 2005.
Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 66-04, Section: A, page: 1430. Adviser: Arlington W. Williams. "Title from dissertation home page (viewed Nov. 2, 2006)."

This research has shown how the nature of the construction project has become increasingly complex and has highlighted how project management decision-making has been supplemented with the use of risk management strategies. Subsequently the use of risk management strategies in construction project execution has had some of its weaknesses exposed, namely the failure of such strategies to consider the role of the individual within the risk management process. Consequently this research has undertaken an investigation to ascertain and understand the nature and impact of individual decision-makers upon the decision-making process. The attributes of and influences upon individual decision-making, risk and uncertainty perceptions and preferences have been explored and discussed in some detail. From those the `risk prism', a metaphor for the perception and preference of risk and uncertainty, was developed to explore the manner in which these decision-making attributes function. An investigation was undertaken to replicate the `risky shift' phenomenon in decisionmaking groups populated by construction project management professionals. The results of this investigation ascertained the influence of the group environment upon construction management decision makers, namely that individuals were influenced to accept greater uncertainty in a group decision environment. Subsequently a case study investigation of an organisations attempt to introduce a new risk management strategy was undertaken from which an enhanced understanding of the group discussion and decision-making environment was ascertained. As a result of these investigations an improved risk management process was developed and is presented within this dissertation.

Thesis (S.B. and M.Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 1999.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 48-49).
by Daniel K. Sheldon.
S.B.and M.Eng.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2010.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 85-87).
In Bayesian hypothesis testing, a decision is made based on a prior probability distribution over the hypotheses, an observation with a known conditional distribution given the true hypothesis, and an assignment of costs to different types of errors. In a setting with multiple agents and the principle of "one person, one vote", the decisions of agents are typically combined by the majority rule. This thesis considers collections of group hypothesis testing problems over which the prior itself varies. Motivated by constraints on memory or computational resources of the agents, quantization of the prior probabilities is introduced, leading to novel analysis and design problems. Two hypotheses and three agents are sufficient to reveal various intricacies of the setting. This could arise with a team of three referees deciding by majority rule on whether a foul was committed. The referees face a collection of problems with different prior probabilities, varying by player. This scenario illustrates that even as all referees share the goal of making correct foul calls, opinions on the relative importance of missed detections and false alarms can vary. Whether cost functions are identical and whether referees use identical quantizers create variants of the problem. When referees are identical in both their cost functions and their quantizers for the prior probabilities, it is optimal for the referees to use the same decision rules. The homogeneity of the referees simplifies the problem to an equivalent single-referee problem with a lower-variance effective noise. Then the quantizer optimization problem is reduced to a problem previously solved by Varshney and Varshney (2008). Centroid and nearest-neighbor conditions that are necessary for quantizer optimality are provided. On the contrary, the problem becomes complicated when variations in cost functions or quantizers are allowed. In this case, decision-making and quantization problems create strategic form games; the decision-making game does always have a Nash equilibrium. The analysis shows that conflict between referees, in the form of variation in cost functions, makes overall team performance worse. Two ways to optimize quantizers are introduced and compared to each other. In the setting that referees purely collaborate, in the form of having equal cost functions, the effect of variations between their quantizers is analyzed. It is shown that the referees have incentive to use different quantizers rather than identical quantizers even though their cost functions are identical. In conclusion, a diverse team with a common goal performs best.
by Joong Bum Rhim.
S.M.

Groups are generally superior to individuals in making decisions. However, time constraints and authoritarian leaders could nullify the potential advantages provided by groups. This thesis proposes a hybrid collaborative Brain-Computer Interface (cBCI) for improving performance in group decision-making. Neural signals recorded via electroencephalography are integrated with other physiological and behavioural measures to predict the likelihood of the user being correct in a decision, i.e., decision confidence. Behavioural responses from multiple users are then weighed according to these confidence estimates to obtain group decisions. The proposed cBCI has been tested with a variety of decision-making tasks, including visual matching, visual search with traditional and realistic stimuli, face recognition from multiple viewpoints, and speech perception. Groups assisted by the cBCI were significantly superior in making decisions than both individuals and traditional equally-sized groups making decisions using the majority method. This thesis also investigates the impact that a constrained form of communication has on individual and group performance in a visual-search experiment. When decision makers are able to exchange information during the experiment, their performance dramatically decreases. However, the cBCI yields superior group decisions even in this context. The confidence estimated by the cBCI is also a more reliable predictor of correctness than the confidence reported by participants after making a decision. When group members were allowed to communicate during visual search, their reported confidence was totally unrelated to the decision correctness, while in a speech perception task reported confidences were very good predictors of correctness. On the contrary, the cBCI?s confidence estimates correlated with correctness in all experiments. When critical decisions involving substantial risks have to be made (e.g., in defence), the proposed cBCI could be a useful tool to reduce the number of erroneous group decisions, thereby saving money and lives.

Computer-Support Cooperative Work (CSCW) reflects the change in emphasis from using computers to solve problems to using computers to facilitate human interactions. Most studies, however, have focused on the use of the technology rather than on the human-human interaction (HHI) in these environments due to: the varied perspectives of the investigators; and the lack of a consistent variables. Although numerous studies exist on a variety of products, only limited research has been conducted with the most prevalent of the technologies in the marketplace, Lotus Notes™. This field study, conducted using Lotus Notes™, operationalizes a model proposed, but not tested, for the study of group decision-making in CSCW environments put forth by Kraemer and Pinsonneault (1990). This study examines the use of CSCW in the group decision-making process, the participation rate for group decision-making in CSCW environments, and the criteria for determining quality in group decisions in CSCW environments. The study also proposes a new perspective for examining technology using the human context, recommends extensions for the group study framework and explores areas for future research.

China’s tourism industry has been developing at a phenomenal pace and an increasing number of young Chinese travellers are now preferring independent travel over package tours (International Tourism Consulting Group, 2011). Independent travel does not equate to an individual travelling alone, Chinese travellers often travel with a small group of people, such as friends, colleagues, and family members. Therefore, associated independent travel decisions and itineraries may not be made by an individual but by the group travelling together. However, the existing literature has not examined how groups of Chinese travellers make travel-related decisions. This study examines how small groups of young Chinese independent travellers make travel-related decisions. Specifically, four sub-objectives are to: 1) explore the topics discussed by group members in the group travel decision-making process; 2) understand how groups of travellers communicate with others in a group travel decision-making process from both verbal and non-verbal communication perspectives; 3) examine whether small groups of travellers experience any disagreement or conflict. If so, how do they address the disagreement or conflict in order to reach agreement; and 4) characterise the actions of group leaders in the group travel decision-making process.
Thesis (PhD Doctorate)
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Griffith Business School
Griffith Business School
Full Text

In modern organizations where managers must constantly be dealing with an overload of information, it is often observed that participants in group decision processes either are not clearly aware of their specific preferences or that they are not capable of properly formulating those preferences. When this happens, inconsistent or incomplete expression of personal preferences and their use in decision making may lead to an unjustifiable outcome for the group. Due to this problem, the strengths and effectiveness of GDSS-supported group meetings may, in some situations, not be apparent. This dissertation develops a new approach to supporting group decision making, focusing on preference knowledge of individual participants in a group. A system architecture for the design of an MCDM (Multiple Criteria Decision Making) GDSS which facilitates the process of eliciting, formulating, utilizing, aggregating, and analyzing preferences for individuals within groups is presented. The architecture integrates multi-criteria decision making paradigms with a group decision support environment. A prototype has been developed in order to demonstrate the design feasibility of an architecture that centers around four phases of choice making: alternative generation, preference specification, alternative evaluation, and preference aggregation. The prototype is designed to support managerial choice and judgment processes in collaborative meetings. The intended problem domain of the model is semi-structured managerial decisions for which decision variables (attributes) can be represented in quantitative terms to some extent, yet for which evaluation of alternatives requires a high degree of intuition and personal analysis. The process of prototyping the proposed architecture and the results from a qualitative study have provided some instructive conclusions relating to MCDM GDSS design: (1) support for human choice strategies can be integrated into a GDSS, (2) appropriate management of preferences of group participants will facilitate collaborative decision processes, (3) hierarchical decomposition of a decision problem can provide structure to a problem and thereby reduce problem complexity, and (4) managerial decisions are appropriate problems to which the current approach can be applied.

Structured Decision Making (SDM) and Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) are increasingly used to facilitate municipal and environmental decision-making. Even though it is well documented that visualization techniques can facilitate analytical activities, few studies have probed into the use of information visualization (infovis) in SDM and MCDA processes. The aim of the present study is to analyze how infovis can support participants in a real-world MCDA/SDM process surrounding an urban infrastructure-planning problem with focus on meetings held to evaluate multiple alternatives over a set of criteria. I attended as a participant in a series of SDM workshops related to the renewal of a municipal sewage treatment facility. Participatory observation was conducted of visualizations used to evaluate multiple alternatives over a number of criteria. Two interactive infovis features were identified to be particularly be beneficial for SDM-based processes: information on demand and exploration of preferences. We demonstrated an interactive computer-based tool developed by our research team, ValueCharts, in a number of meetings with potential users to get their feedback. Drawing on these results and the literature, ValueCharts was extended by our research team to a new version, Group ValueCharts, to support group deliberations during MCDA and SDM processes. An experiment was then conducted with seven participants on a stormwater management decision problem at UBC. Our results show that interactive visualization features in ValueCharts and Group ValueCharts have the potential for increasing the effectiveness of MCDA decision processes. They can facilitate comparing multiple alternatives and also probing into participants’ preferences. Interactive visualization was acknowledged by participants for improving group interaction, exchange of information, identification of sticking points, and focusing discussions on what matter for the final decision. Feedback from the participants and our observations support our conclusion that the identified infovis features hold the potential of facilitating the decision process in SDM. Understanding MCDA concepts, however, seems to be essential to get the most out of such visualization tools. If participants do not grasp MCDA concepts, some of them may become suspicious of the final ranking or not be able to identify some of sticking points that really matter.
Science, Faculty of
Resources, Environment and Sustainability (IRES), Institute for
Graduate

This ethnographic study is concerned with the relationship dynamics between groups jointly tasked with decision making. It seeks to answer the general question: what are the main relationship drivers and influences at work during the process of inter group activity? The research examines the issues surrounding the inter group relationship. How are relationships between the groups formed and maintained and how do they impact the efficacy of the inter group decision process? What makes the inter group relationship in organisational decision making work at a practical level? The work lies within, and makes a contribution to, the areas of social and management psychology. In commercial entities, where a Board comprising executive and non-executive members is charged with strategic decision making, a client/advisor relationship often exists with another group. In the situation researched, one group has the ultimate responsibility for making the decisions whilst a second group is tasked with identifying the requirement for a decision, information gathering, the search for alternatives and the recommendation to the Decision Group. This particular situation is not uncommon within limited companies, partnerships, listed companies and a range of other organisations and is the situation within the research organisation. Successful and effective decision making is an essential ingredient of organisational management. The result of a set of dysfunctional relationships and inefficient processes can be terminal to the organisation. An understanding ofthe relationship dynamics at work improves the decision process and enables managers to identify those negative elements that may compromise efficacy. Additionally, the research conclusions have implications for group recruitment and group training. The research deals with individuals, their actions and their thought processes, both conscious and unconscious. The conceptual framework for the research centers upon the relationship dynamics and relationship overlap between the individuals that are members ofboth groups. The subject and circumstances lend themselves to qualitative research methodology and interpretive ethnography is the approach chosen and is seen as a useful counterbalance and addition to the considerable amount of empirical work on group dynamics available to researchers. An additional dimension is added by the position ofthe researcher as both an insider in the organisation and that organisation's Chief Executive. This poses certain ethical issues which are addressed within the thesis and also illustrates and proposes the use of insider interpretive ethnography as a powerful management tool for newly appointed senior managers and organisational leaders. The qualitative interview is the primary method of data gathering, however, a number of ethnographic methods are employed, including the extensive use of observation field notes. The research is directly grounded in the area of inter group relations and the findings show the direct importance oft he sharing dynamics of fate, motivation, values and understanding to the inter group relationship and the impacts upon trust within and between groups. The role of group leadership is examined and its significant impact on the inter group relationships is proposed. The research provides a further example ofthe use of interpretive ethnography by an organisational insider.

This thesis is concerned with issues ansmg from group argumentation based decision making support. An investigation was carried out into the semantic representation of argumentation schema ontology and the influence of it on decision making support problem. Previous research has shown argumentation as a process of communication and reasoning is a powerful way of discovering the structure and identifying various aspects of ill structured problems. The literature review revealed that many researchers have covered different aspects of representing and evaluating argumentation for decision making purpose, however there is no clearly defined comprehensive conceptual group argumentation framework for decision making support. In most cases, group argumentation and decision making are regarded as separate processes which cause difficulty to fully integrate the argumentation process with the decision making process. In this thesis, the main elements of group argumentation and decision making are identified. A new conceptual framework is designed to glue those two sets of elements together to support decision making fully using argumentation approach. In order to better integrate different sources of argumentative information, a semantic based approach is employed to model argumentative schema ontology. The design of this ontology not only considers the basic discussion and group interaction concepts, but also the notion of strength of the claim and pro/cons argument and different argument types from practical view and epistemic view. In this research, the semantic support is not only constrained to the structure of the argumentation but also to the topic of argumentation content. The experiment has shown the semantic topic annotation of utterances can facilitate the intelligent agent to discover, retrieve and map related 2 information which can bring some new benefits for supporting decision making such as better presenting the perspectives of decision problems, automatically identifying the criteria for evaluating solution, modelling and updating experts' credibility in the topic level etc. Different from a fully automatic or manual semantic annotation approach, a middle way solution for semantic annotation is proposed which allows users to manually label the content with a simple keyword and then automatically conceptualize the keyword using the formal ontological term querying from the cross domain ontology knowledge base -DBpedia. Based on the designed framework and semantics of the defined argumentative ontology, a prototype agent based distributed group argumentation system for decision making was developed. This prototype system, acting as a test bed, was used in a group argumentation experiment to test the proposed hypothesis. The experiment result was gathered from observation and users' experience based on the questionnaire. The analysis of the result indicates that this semantic enhanced group argumentation based decision making approach not only can advise the solution route for a decision task with a high degree of user satisfaction but also can present more perspectives of the decision problems which can enable an iterative process of problem solving. It is consistent with the new vision of group decision making support. A metric based evaluation was conducted to compare our proposed approach with other related approaches from the different aspects regarding group argumentation based decision making support; the conclusion shows our approach not only share many common features with others, but also has many unique characteristics enhanced by the comprehensive argumentation model and semantic support which are essential for the new decision support paradigm. 3 It is considered that the expectations as given in the initial aims have been achieved. Existing methods either focus on the reasoning capability of the argumentation for the decision making or focus on the communicative capability of the argumentation for discovering different problem perspectives and iterating the problem solving process. In our proposed approach, a comprehensive argumentation ontology for argumentation structure and a semantic annotation mechanism to conceptualize the argumentative content are designed so that the semantic support can cover both argumentation structure level and content level, via which the system can better interpret and manage the information generated in the process of group argumentation and provide more semantic services such as argumentation process iteration, decision rationale reuse, decision problem discovery etc. The findings from this study may make a contribution to the development of new paradigm group decision making systems based on group argumentation. 4.

Information technology has played several important roles in group decision making, such as communication support and decision support. Little is known about how information technology can be used to persuade members of a group to reach a consensus. In this dissertation, I aim to address the issues that are related to the role of visual representation technology (VRT) for persuasion in a forecasting context. VRTs are not traditional graphical representation technologies. VRTs can select, transform, and present data in a rich visual format that facilitates exploration, comprehension, and sense-making. The first study investigates conditions under which teams are likely to increase the use of VRTs and how the use of VRTs affects teams' consensus development and decision performance. The second study evaluates the effects of influence types and information technology on a choice shift. A choice shift is the tendency of group members to shift their initial positions to a more extreme direction following discussion. A choice shift is also called group polarization. To complement my first two studies, I conduct a laboratory experiment in my third study. I explore the effect of VRTs and team composition on a choice shift in group confidence.

This study examines the decision-making activities and communicative activities of two groups participating in a simulated medical emergency activity: the control group (CG) using a traditional whiteboard and the experimental group (EG) using a structured interactive whiteboard. The two groups differ in that the EG has a structured template to annotate and share their arguments with each other. Data analysis of the decision-making activities focused on planning, data collecting, managing, and interpreting patient data. Data analysis of the communicative activities focused on informative, argumentative, elicitative, responsive, and directive acts. In the early stage of decision-making the EG spent significantly more time interpreting the situation and less time managing the patient than the CG; in the later stage the EG spent significantly more time managing the patient but less time interpreting the situation. No significant results were found in communicative activities due to low cell frequencies of the utterances. Qualitative results indicated that shared visualizations can disambiguate and clarify verbal interactions and promote productive argumentation and negotiation activities. Shared cognition facilitates the construction of shared situation models and joint problem spaces which lead to better decision making and problem solving.