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.
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.
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
In this complex world, coping with daily problems is quite tedious. The more advancement in technology means more difficulties in decision-making process. Hence some analytical tools are needed to deal with improvement in decisions being made. A classic AHP model enables us to make efficient decision by reducing the complex issues. It takes multiple parameters into consideration. One of the area where decision-making is quite a tough job is Politics. Selection of the electoral party in any elections, be it Lok Sabha elections or Rajya Sabha elections, has been a matter of discussion for the voters as well as the media. The decisions are reflected when uncertainties are added in the opinions of the domain experts due to multiple parameters. In this paper we have proposed a model for rectifying the uncertainties using multi criteria decision analysis and analytic hierarchy process (AHP).
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.
The functions and powers of local self-governance are broadly discussed at all levels of government institutions,non-governmental organizations and communities. There is an expressed position that local communities andtheir local self-governing institutions should be given the power of subsidiary decision making in locally specificissues. However, year after year, the unanimous attitude is suppressed by financial and fiscal dependence upon thecentral government, unreasonably large territorial units with high population density. These circumstances limitdown the decision-making and, moreover, the implementation of the decisions. From this point of view, the financialand fiscal powers of local self-governing institutions and, consequently, the decision-making strata are significantlydifferent from those in other Baltic and Central European countries, as well as Scandinavian states. This articledeals with the analysis of local self-governing administration in terms of its fiscal and financial empowerment, thesize of the local communities and its impact on decision-making. A comparison is drawn with Scandinavian, centralEuropean and Baltic countries.
Within the realm of e-government, the development has moved towards testing new means for democratic decisionmaking, like e-panels, electronic discussion forums, and polls. Although such new developments seem promising, they are not problem-free, and the outcomes are seldom used in the subsequent formal political procedures. Nevertheless, process models offer promising potential when it comes to structuring and supporting transparency of decision processes in order to facilitate the integration of the public into decision-making procedures in a reasonable and manageable way. Based on real-life cases of urban planning processes in Sweden, we present an outline for an integrated framework for public decision making to: a) provide tools for citizens to organize discussion and create opinions; b) enable governments, authorities, and institutions to better analyse these opinions; and c) enable governments to account for this information in planning and societal decision making by employing a process model for structured public decision making.
Decision makers are confronted by a range of emotions, ambiguities and uncertainties in attempting to understand and make sense of change. This exploratory study aims to analyse strategic decision-making, focusing on the meanings attributed by managers during organizational change, in complex environments. The sensemaking literature has been applied because of its association with decision-making and in order to assess how sensemaking in decision-making could be examined. Organizational agents make sense through the mental maps, or schemata that they draw on when dealing with ambiguity. Framed within social constructivist paradigm, this research employs qualitative research design to explore the experiences of managers when making decisions. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews with senior managers in two complex contexts; a university in Australia and a construction company in India. After raw data were captured, documents were analysed using categorical aggregation to establish themes or patterns. The decision makers' responses revealed four themes that helped them to prepare the organization for potential changes. The common themes that emerged from both the cases were rational approaches to decision-making, politics and processes and organizational context. Recognizing the complexity of environments, this research suggests recommendations that may assist the change management community to improve decision making and to share traits, tools, and practices of effective change leaders.
This report supplies references and comments on literature that identifies human factors influencing decision making, particularly military decision making. The literature has been classified as follows (the classes are not mutually exclusive): features of human information processing; decision making models which are not mathematical models but rather are descriptive; non- personality factors influencing decision making; national characteristics influencing decision making; personality factors influencing decision making; decision making in a military organization. The decision maker is influenced by many factors both internal to the decision maker and external to him/her. The environmental context in which a decision is made makes it difficult to associate personality traits with specific decision making behavior. Internal factors that influence decision making include limited information processing and memory capabilities. These limitations can result in biases in processing information such as anchoring (undue weight for evidence supporting(the initial hypothesis) or recency (undue weight on more recent evidence). The limitations can also result in decision making heuristics. Training and experience can lessen the effects of limited information processing and memory capabilities. The first part of the report is a summary of the findings of the literature survey. This is followed by detailed endnotes concerning the references.
The brain is the exclusive organ that makes decisions for humans and the society. In this thesis, I will discuss recent advances in the understanding of neuroscientific mechanisms in decision-making. Decision-making is not a new topic in the human history, but it has existed for thousands of years. We made numerous decisions over centuries, and the consequences of those decisions transformed the landscape of the Earth, established the norms for our society, and revolutionized our way of thinking. To understand the concepts and frameworks for decision-making, I will review significant intellectual advances in the history, start with several simple enough models to describe and predict decisionmaking behaviors. However, the models, concepts, and logical deduction do not provide enough understanding of the decision-making process. We should also aware limitations, which determine our choice processes and outcomes, such as how much information we have, how much cognitive power we can put into a problem. After the established the models that sufficiently contain the errors and limitations of decision-making, the central question is to understand the brain, which operates the whole process. As the brain is specialized into functional regions, it is easier to build hypothesis in decision-making process if we conceptually break down the decision-making process into discrete stages. Firstly, attention is the foremost important mechanism controls our actions and choices. Only with attention allocated to the problem, one can then represent the problem to related brain areas, mobilize memory and the affective system to retrieve internal status, start evaluating different choices, plan and take action, reevaluate the outcome and update the original memory and representation of values. To further dissect the decisionmaking mechanism in the brain, particularly in this thesis, we examined and discussed neural circuits that are regulated by local interneurons and long-range neuromodulators. Moreover, such knowledge can be robustly translated into an understanding of various types of mental disorders. In this thesis, three studies are included to illustrate how different neural circuits could alter animals' decision-making process and performance. In Paper I, the prefrontal fast-spiking interneurons were recorded and manipulated in a task measuring a goal-directed behavior and top-down attention. The neuronal activities of fast-spiking cells in the medial prefrontal cortex were significantly regulated during the attentional process, and such pattern defined the firing of the principal neurons with a phase-locking mechanism. We further showed enhanced gamma synchrony characterized the successful allocation of attention. Moreover, modulation of gamma synchrony using optogenetics can significantly change the animals' performance in top-down attention. In Paper II, we investigated the functions of fast-spiking NMDA glutamate receptors in depressive-like behavior. Using a genetically modified animal model, we compared the phenotypes between the fast-spiking NMDA receptor knockout animals and controls. There was no significant difference between two groups in response to non-competitive NMDA receptor antagonist in expressing depressive-like symptoms or in anhedonia. In Paper III, we investigated the role of the long-range modulatory serotonergic system in impulsive behaviors. Activation of the ascending serotonergic population with optogenetics slightly alleviate the level of impulsiveness in both impulsive action and impulsive choice. Conversely, optogenetic inhibition of the ascending serotonergic population significantly increased impulsive action and impulsive choice. Furthermore, using optical calcium imaging, our results illustrated that the neuronal activities of the ascending serotonergic population strongly responded to the delivery of reward. In summary, the work of this thesis provides a further understanding and new insights of functional roles of particular neuronal subpopulations in different discrete stages of decision-making.
In the public sector, the decision-making process is multidimensional. Themethodological framework for all decision-making theories is the rationalisttradition, according to which mankind is inherently rational and seeks to maximizeits goals. The proponents of the main decision-making theories—the rationalcomprehensivetheory, the incremental theory and the mixed scanning theory—seekto argue in favour of their postulated values and the approaches to avoidunnecessary risks of the decision-making process. Those theories are aimed atpromoting innovative solutions in the new public management environment. Toimprove the decision-making process, it is necessary to improve the management ofinformation flows which would allow an accurate and objective information analysisby distorting the information necessary for decision-making.
Part 7: Evaluation ; International audience ; Electronic government, or e-Government, is the use of information and communication technology in the public sector. As a research field, it is characterized as multi-disciplinary with heritage from both the information systems and public administration fields. This diverse background may be beneficial, but it may also result in a fragmented theoretical base and conceptual vagueness. This paper applies decision theory to e-Government to tie a number of theoretical and practical concepts together. In particular, five concepts from decision theory (i.e. objectives, stakeholder inclusion, weighting and resource allocation, risk analysis, and outcomes assessment) are compared with counterparts in e-Government. The findings have both theoretical and practical implications. First, they add to and unite e-Government theory. Second, practical methods for operationalizing the theoretical concepts are proposed. This operationalization includes using a holistic approach to e-participation throughout decision processes.
Electronic government, or e-Government, is the use of information and communication technology in the public sector. As a research field, it is characterized as multi-disciplinary with heritage from both the information systems and public administration fields. This diverse background may be beneficial, but it may also result in a fragmented theoretical base and conceptual vagueness. This paper applies decision theory to e-Government to tie a number of theoretical and practical concepts together. In particular, five concepts from decision theory (i.e. objectives, stakeholder inclusion, weighting and resource allocation, risk analysis, and outcomes assessment) are compared with counterparts in e-Government. The findings have both theoretical and practical implications. First, they add to and unite e-Government theory. Second, practical methods for operationalizing the theoretical concepts are proposed. This operationalization includes using a holistic approach to e-participation throughout decision processes.
