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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.

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

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

The problem of measuring the quality of health care is one of the most evasive, yet important, problems in medical administration. Outcome measures, the ultimate validators of care, suffer from a number of drawbacks. Multiattribute utility (MAU) analysis can potentially resolve many of the issues involved in quality assurance. In this paper the potential contributions of MAU analysis are outlined, a number of MAU studies contributing to quality measurement discussed, and suggestions for quality assurance systems made ; Supported in part by the Foundation Research Office of Naval Research ; http://archive.org/details/multiattributeap00giau ; N0001476WR60052 ; NA

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.