Suchergebnisse

Abstract

Background and Purpose: In every organization, project management raises many different decision-making problems, a large proportion of which can be efficiently solved using specific decision-making support systems. Yet such kinds of problems are always a challenge since there is no time-efficient or computationally efficient algorithm to solve them as a result of their complexity. In this study, we consider the problem of optimal financial investment. In our solution, we take into account the following organizational resource and project characteristics: profits, costs and risks.

Design/Methodology/Approach: The decision-making problem is reduced to a multi-criteria 0-1 knapsack problem. This implies that we need to find a non-dominated set of alternative solutions, which are a trade-off between maximizing incomes and minimizing risks. At the same time, alternatives must satisfy constraints. This leads to a constrained two-criterion optimization problem in the Boolean space. To cope with the peculiarities and high complexity of the problem, evolution-based algorithms with an island meta-heuristic are applied as an alternative to conventional techniques.

Results: The problem in hand was reduced to a two-criterion unconstrained extreme problem and solved with different evolution-based multi-objective optimization heuristics. Next, we applied a proposed meta-heuristic combining the particular algorithms and causing their interaction in a cooperative and collaborative way. The obtained results showed that the island heuristic outperformed the original ones based on the values of a specific metric, thus showing the representativeness of Pareto front approximations. Having more representative approximations, decision-makers have more alternative project portfolios corresponding to different risk and profit estimations. Since these criteria are conflicting, when choosing an alternative with an estimated high profit, decision-makers follow a strategy with an estimated high risk and vice versa.

Conclusion: In the present paper, the project portfolio decision-making problem was reduced to a 0-1 knapsack constrained multi-objective optimization problem. The algorithm investigation confirms that the use of the island meta-heuristic significantly improves the performance of genetic algorithms, thereby providing an efficient tool for Financial Responsibility Centres Management.

The subject of the article is the process of making an economic decision. The stages of the history of economic-psychological researches – economic psychology, behavioral economy, psychology of economic behavior are distinguished. The contribution to the study of the psychological factors of the economic behavior of the winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics is shown. The theory of rational expectations of John von Neumann and O. Morgerstern Is characterized, particular attention is paid to the prospect theory of D. Kaneman and A. Tversky. The latter is presented in the form of heuristic decision making – representativeness, availability, adjustment, and anchoring, in addition, with the distinction of rational and irrational moments of this process. It is stated that the corresponding model of decision making does not take into account and that behind the economic-psychological lies in the actual psychological logic that a person makes decisions based on his own strategy, coping. The concept of decision making is substantially incomplete. Opportunity of the possibility of specification of the prospect theory of by the Case Study method – the analysis of a particular case of economic behavior opens. The Melbourne decision making questionnaire applies, the factors of this process – vigilance, back-passing, procrastination, and hypervigilance are manifest. The investigator is given the instruction to make an expanded comment on every statement, to explain own argumentation, as well as the obtained result. The rational and irrational components of its solution and features of coping are analyzed. It is determined that vigilance is the dominant factor, it turns out to be the most productive way of decision making. A model of coping of decision making, which specifies the theory of the prospects of D. Kaneman and A. Tversky and expands the limits of its application in the field of psychology of human economic behavior, is constructed.