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Sustainable development is defined as development that meets the needs of the present generation, but does not compromise the satisfaction of future generations&rsquo ; needs. It emphasizes the concept of needs and constraints. Women&rsquo ; s lack of development is not the result of insufficient involvement in production, but the fact that much of the cost paid by women is ignored and they do not get the rewards and affirmations they deserve. There are also many other factors of uncertainty. Therefore, this study considers that grey multiattribute decision-making refers to when there are factors of uncertain or incomplete information in the process of decision-making, after obtaining the actual decision-making combination effect by calculating the effect of the combination of all possible decision-making elements to select a scheme according to the decision matrix. The research results show that a mixed economic system is the best scheme for women&rsquo ; s economic security. Developing a gender and sustainable environment can be optimized by actively creating new friendly workplace practices, including designing flexible working hours and working environments, promoting multiple vacation schemes, assisting employees in their career development, and providing family care and support services.

Sponsored Report (for Acquisition Research Program) ; The current fiscal crisis has placed unprecedented pressure on public procurements. A major target of future public spending cuts is likely to be defense expenditures. Within the defense budget, the biggest and most immediate targets are likely to be the acquisition of new equipment, facilities, services, and supplies. Addressing the growing global challenge of affordability, this paper offers a new approach to government''s vendor selection decisions in major public procurements. In the absence of profits to guide public procurement decisions, the challenge that faces a government buyer is to select the vendor that delivers the best combination of desired non-price attributes at realistic funding levels. The governance mechanism proposed in this paper is a multiattribute first price, sealed bid procurement auction. It extends traditional price-only auctions to one in which competition takes place exclusively over bundles of desired non-price attributes. The first iteration of the model is a multiattribute auction in which a fixed budget constraint is specified. Next, the model is expanded to incorporate a range of possible budget levels. This expanded model reveals the benefits to the buyer of defining a procurement alternative (vendor bid proposal) in terms of its value to the buyer over a range of possible expenditures, rather than as a single point in budget-value space. This new approach leads to some interesting results. In particular, it suggests that in a fiscally constrained environment, the traditional approach of eliminating dominated alternatives could lead to sub-optimal decisions. The final extension of the model explicitly examines the buyer''s decision problem under budget uncertainty. ; Naval Postgraduate School Acquisition Research Program ; Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.

The exercise of conscience can have far reaching effects. Poor behaviour can be fatal, as it has occurred in various medical scandals over the years. This article takes a wide definition of conscience as its starting point, and argues that the decision-making processes open to society--legal regulation and professional regulation--can serve to limit the options available to an individual and thus her ability to exercise her conscience. The article charts the law's changing attitude to legal intervention, which now seeks to limit the use of conscience by individuals, and addresses concerns that this may serve to 'de-moralise' medicine. It also examines the reasons for this legal change of approach. ; Peer-reviewed ; Post-print

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.

We review the literature to identify common problems of decision-making in individuals and groups. We are guided by a Bayesian framework to explain the interplay between past experience and new evidence, and the problem of exploring the space of hypotheses about all the possible states that the world could be in and all the possible actions that one could take. There are strong biases, hidden from awareness, that enter into these psychological processes. While biases increase the efficiency of information processing, they often do not lead to the most appropriate action. We highlight the advantages of group decision-making in overcoming biases and searching the hypothesis space for good models of the world and good solutions to problems. Diversity of group members can facilitate these achievements, but diverse groups also face their own problems. We discuss means of managing these pitfalls and make some recommendations on how to make better group decisions.

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.

Decision-making about infrastructure is very complex. Decisions to develop the Rotterdam harbour are being taken in a network of local, regional and national actors and influenced by international actors (firms, NGO's etc.) both public and private. This decision-making process shows a lot of uncertainty and complexity and the outcomes are of great importance for the development of the harbour. Network theory has been widely used to indicate, explain and manage uncertainty in decision-making processes. The theory is well equipped for empirical research and has shown many applicable results. The attention for influences from outside the network to decision-making inside the network is however still poorly developed. In the case of decision-making with a strong international component this is a handicap. In this paper the relation between influences from outside and decision-making inside networks is studied both theoretically and empirically. A distinction is made between locally bound and non-locally bound networks to theorise the complex decision-making process. The well-known scientific concept of space of flows versus space of places from Manuel Castells is used as an inspiration to describe the relation between the locally and non-locally bounded networks of decision making. The locally bounded network is formed by the formal decision making process between the governmental and non-governmental organisations in countries, regions and municipalities. The non-locally bounded networks exist of organizations that are footloose and act globally mainly according to economic principals. The concept of inclusion is used to analyse the various actors in the decision-making process. The paper starts with the description of the external influences in port areas in general. The balance between the influence of local and non-local bounded networks depends on the multiple-inclusion of the different actors in the decision-making process in both networks. In areas in which many actors are included in the place-bounded networks, the external influences can be expected to be marginal. The port area of Rotterdam is a node in international networks and so the hypothesis can be set that in the Rotterdam port area the influence of actors mainly included in non-place bounded networks is significant in decision making networks. To explore this assumption various networks, which are relevant for decision-making about spatial issues in the Rotterdam port are identified and the differences in inclusion of the relevant actors is analysed. By means of the analysis of perceptions of the various actors (locally bound or non-locally bound) and their strategic choices and decisions we show that notions on international port development are being interpreted and transformed quite differently by the various actors. This first part of analysis highlights the possible gap between the awareness of the various actors of the non-locally bounded networks and their translation into their strategies in local bounded networks. We also trace difference of perceptions and strategies between actors who solely operate in locally bound networks and actors who are both included in locally and non-locally bound networks (like shipping firms etc). This second part of analysis indicates if there are differences in what the actors use as input for their respective positions in the decision-making networks. The paper shows that the influence of external developments in non-locally bound networks manifests itself in locally bound networks but is transformed and interpreted in many ways by the different actors. The paper ends with some conclusions about decision-making on large ports and the possibilities to influence this complex decision-making process that takes place in locally bound and non-locally bounded networks at the same time.

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.

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