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Many "real world" decisions are made by groups. It is rare that the responsi- bility for a very important decision is given to a single decision maker with complete authority. Group decision making adds both advantages to the process as well as disadvantages. This research examines the question: "Are decisions made by groups really that much different from the decisions made by individuals in the group?" A specific case study involving the selection of the best primary training aircraft type for military pilot training is used to examine this question. Fifteen military pilots with various backgrounds and experience levels participate as decision makers in the study. The decision analysis method of Value Focused Thinking is used to facilitate both individual and group decision making sessions. Value hierarchies are created for all sessions, and a set of alternatives is generated and scored. Kendall's Coefficient of Concordance is used to determine the level of agreement between decisions made by the group and individual decision makers.

This paper introduces a methodology for strategic intervention in collective decision making.The methodology is based on (1) a decomposition of the problem into a few main controversial issues, (2) systematic interviews of subject area specialists to obtain a specification of the decision setting,consisting of a list of stakeholders with their capabilities, positions, and salience on each of the issues; (3) computer simulation. The computer simulation models incorporate only the main processes through which differences in positions and salience are accommodated in binding decisions: management of meaning through the provision of convincing information, challenges, and exchanges. The methodology generates insights into the likely outcomes of the process, the amount of conflict involved, and the stability of the outcomes.These insights and the investigation of the effects of strategic moves provide major strategic advantages to the user. This is likely to lead to a better representation of the user's own position in the decision outcomesnd the creation of a broader political and social support behind the decision outcome

Objectives: To assess the knowledge of pharmacoeconomic (PE) information in patient groups, healthcare professionals, Government Formulary List Advisory Committee (GFLAC) and Pharmaceutical Research Based Industry Malta Association (PRIMA) members, to determine the extent to which PE information is used in formulary decision making and to define the specific challenges to adapt and establish the PE concept locally. Method: A cross sectional study was conducted to investigate local PE knowledge and trend of use. A structured questionnaire was drafted. The questionnaire was distributed electronically to GFLAC members, health care professionals, patient groups and PRIMA members. A review of international PE guidelines was carried out followed by development of another questionnaire to obtain feedback from experienced Health Technology Assessment (HTA) and PE units in European countries. This questionnaire was disseminated to European organisations after obtaining permission to use 33 European countries listed on the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics Organisation (ISPOR) and the European Network for Health Technology Assessment (EUnetHTA) mail lists. Key Findings: Fourty out of a total of 74 electronically distributed questionnaires (response rate 54%) were returned. With regards to formulary decision making, the most influential profession was that of physicians whilst the most influential factors were drug efficacy and drug safety. The majority of participants are in favour of PE being required in formulary decision making. A total of 15 replies from 13 different European agencies were obtained. The majority of respondents agreed that Malta should adopt its own system of PE assessment. A further suggestion addressed the adaptation and tailoring of an existing national system and application of pharmacoeconomics in special cases. Conclusion: Results obtained in this study indicate that the concept of pharmacoeconomics should be required in formulary decision making and that Malta would benefit from adopting its own system of PE assessment. ; peer-reviewed

MOVES Institute Research Project ; The research aims to gain insight into optimal wargaming decision making mechanisms using neurophysiological measures by investigating whether brain activation and visual scan patterns predict attention, perception, and/or decision-making errors through human-in-the-loop wargaming simulation experiments. We investigate whether brain activity and visual scan patterns can explain optimal wargaming decision making and its development with a within- person design; ie, the transition from exploring the environment to exploiting the environment. In this report, we first describe ongoing research that uses neurophysiological predictors in two military decision making tasks that tap reinforcement learning and cognitive flexibility.

As governments at last get down to business in the Tokyo Round of GATT negotiations, much is going to depend on the extent to which agreement is reached between the European Community, Japan and the United States. In this connection, it is important that people should understand the ways of the Japanese, particularly their decision-making process which somewhat seems to inhibit their ability to negotiate.

Safety is an important topic for a wide range of disciplines, such as engineering, economics, sociology, psychology, political science and philosophy, and plays a central role in risk analysis and risk management. The aim of this thesis is to develop a concept of safety that is relevant for decision-making, and to elucidate its consequences for risk and safety research and practices. Essay I provides a conceptual analysis of safety in the context of societal decision-making, focusing on some fundamental distinctions and aspects, and argues for a more complex notion than what is commonly given. This concept of safety explicitly includes epistemic uncertainty, the degree to which we are uncertain of our knowledge of the situation at hand. It is discussed the extent to which such a concept may be considered an objective concept, and concluded that it is better seen as an intersubjective concept. Some formal versions of a comparative safety concept are also proposed. Essay II explores some consequences of epistemic uncertainty. It is commonly claimed that the public is irrational in its acceptance of risks. An underlying presumption in such a claim is that the public should follow the experts' advice in recommending an activity whenever the experts have better knowledge of the risk involved. This position is criticised based on considerations from epistemic uncertainty and the goal of safety. Furthermore, it is shown that the scope of the objection covers the entire field of risk research, risk assessment as well as risk management. Essay III analyses the role of epistemic uncertainty for principles of achieving safety in an engineering context. The aim is to show that to account for common engineering principles we need the understanding of safety that has been argued for in Essays I-II. Several important principles in engineering safety are analysed, and it is argued that we cannot fully account for them on a narrow interpretation of safety as the reduction of risk (understanding risk as the combination of ...

Defence date: 22 November 2013 ; This thesis is a collection of three essays on voting as a means of collective decision- making. The first chapter builds a model of how voters should optimally behave in a legislative election with three parties under plurality rule. I show that, in contrast to single district elections, properties such as polarisation and misaligned voting can be mitigated in legislative elections. The second chapter studies a model of committee decision making where members have career concerns and a principal can choose the level of transparency (how much of the committees decision he can observe). We show that increased transparency leads to a breakdown in information aggregation, but that this may actually increase the principal's payoff. The theoretical model is then tested in a laboratory experiment. The final chapter introduces a model of legislative bargaining where three parties in the legislature bargain over the formation of government by choosing a policy and a distribution of government perks. I show that when individual politicians are responsible for the policies they implement - that is, those outside of government are not held accountable by voters for the implemented governments policies, while each individual politician in the ruling coalition is - then a given seat distribution can result in almost any two party coalition. ; -- Voting in legislative elections under plurality rule -- How transparency kills information aggregation (and why that may be good) -- Legislative bargaining with accountability

Despite the wide variety of agendas used in legislative settings, the literature on sophisticated voting has focused on two formats, the so-called Euro-Latin and Anglo-American agendas. In the current paper, I introduce a broad class of agendas whose defining structural features, history-independence and persistence, are common in legislative settings. I then characterize the social choice rules implemented by sophisticated voting on agendas with these two features. I also characterize the rules implemented by more specialized formats (called priority agendas and convex agendas) whose structure is closely related to the prevailing rules for order-of-voting used by legislatures. These results establish a clear connection between structure and outcomes for a wide range of legislative agendas.

The redevelopment of sites with the existence of historical contamination – in some specific cases most commonly known as "brownfields" – contains still open questions, not only in Central European countries. North and South America have experienced cases which not only suffer from a scarcity of financial resources, but also institutional limitations. The redevelopment of certain old contaminated areas can be attractive, because it might become a potentially lucrative area for redevelopment projects that can also bring interesting job and research opportunities. The paper presents a recapitulation of studies concerning the application of the decision and stakeholder theories for the solution of environmental problems, focusing mainly on brownfield issues. We also analyzed the decision making processes in the management of contaminated land in the Czech Republic. Brownfield management still lacks legislation in the Czech context; however the treatment of ecological burdens of the past has been regulated within the process of privatization at the beginning of the 1990's. The last part of the work focuses mainly on the reme- dial decision making for ecological burdens of the past in the Czech Republic. The main objective of this work has been to gather ideas from the local and international context, and to adapt them to the actual decision making processes of the management of historical con- tamination in the Czech Republic. We concluded that the tools provided by the stakeholder theory and the laws governing decision making, which are intended for setting remedial goals, are a key factor for the potential success of brownfield management. At the end of the work there is a suggested solution diagram for the decision making process in the management of historical contamination in the Czech Republic that integrates the main ideas gathered after our recapitulation of studies.

The lobbying process is modelled as an auction with externalities in which lobbies bid to get implemented their most-preferred policy. Furthermore, the government may influence the lobbying process itself by biasing the auction among organized interests. We identify the following trade-off: competition yields a higher transfer to the government, but the outcome of the game tends to be less efficient than what it is when lobbies negotiate. We extend and illustrate the model by means of a public good game involving several regions. Lobbying by regions may yield a quantity of public good that may vastly differ from that chosen by a majority of regions. This is so when the regions with the highest financing shares lie at the extremes of the distribution.

The lobbying process is modelled as an auction with externalities in which lobbies bid to get implemented their most-preferred policy. Furthermore, the government may influence the lobbying process itself by biasing the auction among organized interests. We identify the following trade-off: competition yields a higher transfer to the government, but the outcome of the game tends to be less efficient than what it is when lobbies negotiate. We extend and illustrate the model by means of a public good game involving several regions. Lobbying by regions may yield a quantity of public good that may vastly differ from that chosen by a majority of regions. This is so when the regions with the highest financing shares lie at the extremes of the distribution.

Due to a lack of time and expertise, policy makers often rely on others, such as bureaucrats, experts, or advisers, when policy decisions have to be made. A nontrivial problem is that those who possess information have a vested interest in the policy outcome; this gives them an incentive to manipulate or conceal information. In this book, we examine a penalty for lying and the power to replace an advisor as a means of restraining information providers from information manipulation. We argue that these two institutional arrangements may not always help a policy maker to attain a better decision (Chapters 2 and 3). Inasmuch as consequences of policies are complicated and difficult to foresee, small groups like committees often assist policy makers to collect information, deliberate over policies, and devise policy recommendations. As information is not for free, committee members must be motivated to collect it. We shed some light on how deliberation affects committee members' incentives to gather the costly information, and thus the quality of collective decision-making (Chapter 4). Outside the political arena, agency problems between politicians and voters also exist. In Chapter 5, we examine how elections play their role of disciplining and selecting politicians and how policy choices are made when politicians differ in their motivations in running for political office.

Supported decision-making is at the forefront of modern disability research. This is due to Article 12 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), which creates a state obligation to provide support for the exercise of legal capacity. This turned the practice of supported decision-making into a human rights imperative. Government and funding agencies are increasingly focusing their attention on the area. Researchers are similarly increasing their interest in the field. The impending danger is that the rush of interest in the area will overshadow the original intention of supported decision-making: to ensure that people with cognitive disability are provided with the freedom and the tools to participate as equal citizens and for every individual to be free to direct their own life. This article explores the theoretical foundations of supported decision-making and the evolution of supported decision-making research. It explains the research that is emerging in leading jurisdictions, the United States and Australia, and its potential to transform disability services and laws related to decision-making. Finally, it identifies areas of concern in the direction of such research and provides recommendations for ensuring that supported decision-making remains protective of the rights, will and preferences of people with cognitive disability.

This article provides an analysis of the skills that health professionals and patients employ in reaching diagnosis and decision-making in telemedicine consultations. As governmental priorities continue to emphasize patient involvement in the management of their disease, there is an increasing need to accurately capture the provider-patient interactions in clinical encounters. Drawing on conversation analysis of 10 video-mediated consultations in 3 National Health Service settings in England, this study examines the interaction between patients, General Practitioner (GPs), nurses, and consultants during diagnosis and decision-making, with the aim to identify the range of skills that participants use in the process and capture the interprofessional communication and patient involvement in the diagnosis and decision-making phases of telemedicine consultations. The analysis shows that teleconsultations enhance collaborative working among professionals and enable GPs and nurses to develop their skills and actively participate in diagnosis and decision-making by contributing primary care-specific knowledge to the consultation. However, interprofessional interaction may result in limited patient involvement in decision-making. The findings of this study can be used to inform training programs in telemedicine that focus on the development of effective skills for professionals and the provision of information to patients. ; open access article

This research aims to gain insight into optimal wargaming decision-making mechanisms using neurophysiological measures by investigating whether brain activation and visual scan patterns predict attention, perception, and/or decision-making errors through human-in-the-loop wargaming simulation experiments. We investigate whether brain activity and visual scan patterns can explain optimal wargaming decision making and its development with a within-person design; i.e., the transition from exploring the environment to exploiting the environment. We describe ongoing research that uses neurophysiological predictors in two military decision making tasks that tap reinforcement learning and cognitive flexibility. ; Army Research Office (ARO), PO Box 1221, Research ; Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.