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This thesis describes the development and application of a decision support system for logistics strategy modelling. The decision support system that is developed enables the modelling of logistics systems at a strategic level for any country or area in the world. The model runs on IBM PC or compatible computers under DOS (disk operating system). The decision support system uses colour graphics to represent the different physical functions of a logistics system. The graphics of the system is machine independent. The model displays on the screen the map of the area or country which is being considered for logistic planning. The decision support system is hybrid in term of algorithm. It employs optimisation for allocation. The customers are allocated by building a network path from customer to the source points taking into consideration all the production and throughput constraints on factories, distribution depots and transshipment points. The system uses computer graphic visually interactive heuristics to find the best possible location for distribution depots and transshipment points. In a one depot system it gives the optimum solution but where more than one depot is involved, the optimum solution is not guaranteed. The developed model is a cost-driven model. It represents all the logistics system costs in their proper form. Its solution very much depends on the relationship between all the costs. The locations of depots and transshipment points depend on the relationship between inbound and outbound transportation costs. The model has been validated on real world problems, some of which are described here. The advantages of such a decision support system for the formulation of a problem are discussed. Also discussed is the contribution of such an approach at the validation and solution presentation stages.

This dissertation applies upper echelon theory to a nonprofit religious organization to explore how leaders' mission perspectives influence their decisions, and in turn, how those decisions affect organizational outcomes. My case is the U.S. Roman Catholic Church and how bishops' theological ideologies influence their decisions about how to respond to the priest shortage. My findings are consistent with existing strategic management literature in that multiple factors are significant in predicting decision outcomes: the organizational characteristics, the local environment, and leader characteristics. Bishops ideology had some effect, suggesting that bishops were influenced by their understanding of mission and exercised value-rational decision-making. However, the objective situation, the scope of the priest shortage, had more consistent effects. This characterizes bishops' decision-making as instrumentally rational. My findings also suggest an influence from the broader institutional environment. The prevailing ideology/culture of the Roman Catholic Church had different influences at different time periods. Additional analyses showed that the bishops' decisions affected organizational outcomes. Based on measures of membership levels and participation, there was a negative response to use of non-traditional forms of parish leadership, as indicated by reductions in the numbers of Catholics and sacramental activity.

Confidence in a belief is a feeling about the probability of the correctness of the belief. Research has shown that subjects tend to be overconfident in the correctness of their beliefs when that confidence is measured against the actual probability of the belief being correct. Further research has indicated the importance of the amount, relevance, and source of background information on the degree of confidence expressed in a belief. Phillips and Wright (1977) have proposed a three stage model for how confidence in a belief is evaluated and transformed into a confidence response. This research examined how the amount and relevance of information pertaining to a belief influenced the subject's confidence in the belief, and the plausibility of the Phillips and Wright confidence response model. Subjects were presented information about a hypothetical individual and were asked to indicate true or false that the profiled individual was from a particular occupation group, and their confidence in their true/false response. Profile information varied from high to low relevance for the occupation decision, and in the amount of information presented. Subject response times were measured, once the profile had been read and removed, from the presentation of the occupation statement to the subjects true/false response. Subjects indicated greatest confidence when the maximum amount of highly relevant information was presented. Further, information relevance alone produced a significant change in confidence, while the amount of information did not. The prediction of the Phillips and Wright model of greatest response times with subject expressions of moderate confidence was not supported. Instead, subjects responded most quickly when most confident and slowest when least confident. Information relevance was negatively related to response time while the amount of information was positively related to response time.

Research examined information combination in both choice and pre-choice (screening) phases of decision making. Three experiments required subjects to review a set of multiattributed options for a possible purchase. Each option had either high or low expected probability of availability, and a set number of positive or negative attributes. In the first experiment, subjects were asked to indicate their preferred choices. Analysis showed that the majority of subjects multiplicatively combined the probability of option availability with other option attributes, as predicted by expected utility theory. In the second experiment, subjects were asked to eliminate unacceptable options, but not choose. Analysis showed that the majority of subjects additively combined information on negative option attributes (violations) with low probability of option availability, as predicted by image theory. The third experiment showed that when choice immediately followed screening, 28% of the subjects used multiplicative information combination to make the choice, 28% used additive combination, and both types of combination were equally dominant in the remaining 44% of the subjects.

Emotionality in environmental decisions is a function of the characteristics of the environmental planning problem, the decider, and of the situation in which decisions occur. This research examined the effects of problem and decider characteristics upon the emotionality of the decision process and upon decisions. Descriptions of a resource management problem were varied in a two by four factorial design with two writing style levels (emotional and objective) and differential emphasis of two pro-development and two pro-preservative issues. Subjects read a problem description, made and evaluated confidence in a decision, placed the decision on a 156 mm preservation-development continuum, rated their emotionality on 42 scale items, and completed an Environmental Attitude Survey. Data analysis indicated that pro-development issue emphases resulted in more development decisions and lower confidence than pro-preservation emphases. Also, negative affect, environmental concern, preservation decisions, and confidence were interrelated. Neither independent variable affected emotionality, however, possibly due to the effects of the order of experimental instruments on salience of emotional response. A second experiment was conducted with half the original problem descriptions. Emotions were made more salient by asking subjects to complete the emotion scale instrument before making or describing their decisions. Significantly more preservation decisions were made in this second experiment and confidence in decisions increased. Increased negative affect was found in the second experiment also. Three major conclusions were reached. First, emotionality is a significant predictor of environmental decisions. The weakness of its predictive power may be due to the verbal, hypothetical, experimental setting. Second, the configuration of preservation decisions, high confidence, and negative affect could be related to behavior such as environmental activism, and bears further empirical investigation. Third, environmental decisions may be highly variable and sensitive to differences in situations and informational variables. A multi-method approach to study of environmental decisions and to gathering of public input is advocated.

This dissertation describes three different hierarchical schemes for routing and flow control in communication networks. The basic idea in these schemes is to distribute the decision making capability among different hierarchical levels. A part of the decision is made at the lower level of network nodes and another part is made at the higher level of Coordinators. Specific problems at the lower level of nodes and the higher level of Coordinators are formulated in an optimization framework and solutions to these problems result in the overall control scheme. Two modes of operation for the Coordinators are identified and a step by step procedure to implement these modes of operation is also developed. Performance evaluations of these hierarchical schemes are conducted using stochastic models and simulation experiments. Different models for the nodes are used while developing these hierarchical schemes. In one of these schemes a queueing model is used to design a buffer allocation scheme to implement flow control while in another a state dependent model is used to design a combined routing and flow control scheme. The solution to this combined problem is obtained through the concepts of system stabilization. Major strong points of these hierarchical schemes are as follows. They provide a framework for integrating routing and flow control functions. They provide consideration of multiple objectives such as delay, throughput, and fairness individually. By implementing the Coordinators action at a slower time scale, the trade-off existing in information overheads and optimality can be exploited.

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