Collaborative processes are widely used to harness resources for addressing community problems. Despite their positive potential, collaborative projects can fragment. Sources of fragmentation include participant misperception of facts, difficulties in defining the problem, and misunderstandings among stakeholders. Disruptions from these elements may impede a group's progress in fostering and implementing agreements. Theoretical and empirical research from conflict resolution has shown that discussing participant interests and the use of facilitation techniques can help negotiators engage in innovative problem solving. Interests are participants' underlying needs, concerns, and desires that shape how individuals perceive issues and the stances they take. Less attention has been given to designing multi–party collaborative processes so that participant interests are explicitly defined and addressed. This comparative case study used mixed methods to examine the role of interests on the evolution of five successfully implemented multi-party collaborative cases. The research examined how participant interests were identified, how facilitation techniques were used, and how stakeholders' interests were addressed in each case. Results show that in all cases, identifying participant interests helped participants understand the central problems, seek information, and use creative problem solving. The use of techniques such as clarifying questions and shared learning experiences in the context of regular face-to–face meetings fostered participant understanding of the issues and each others' interests. In four of the five cases, participants' understanding of other stakeholders' interests affected their perspective on the issues, improved understanding of individual barriers, shaped the agreement, and motivated participants to stay committed to the project. Project staff members and participant leaders used facilitation techniques for identifying actors'’ substantive interests and clarifying issues. These techniques addressed participant relationship and process interests. In the cases with higher levels of fragmentation, participant interests were connected to values, individuals used competitive bargaining tactics, and trust influenced the willingness of participants to share interests. Facilitation techniques were crucial for encouraging trust building among stakeholders and for managing disruptions. These findings indicate that managers will increase problem solving capacity in collaborative processes by explicitly using negotiation-–based facilitation techniques to identify and address participant interests.

The purpose of this research.is to (1) describe and analyze the different methods used by Japanese and by U.S. persons to reach agreement in small group deliberations, (2) discover the depth of commitment and personal involvement with these methods by tracing their historical beginnings and (3) draw implications from (1) and (2) as to probability of success of current problem solving deliberations involving members of both groups. In the Yayoi period of Japanese history (250 B.C. - 300 A.D.), a special set of circumstances in both the ecological and cultural sphere encouraged the consensus type of decision-making and commensurate cultural norms to develop among the inhabitants of the Japanese archipelago. Following the Yayoi by some 300 years was the Nara period of Prince Shotoku who attempted to reform and modernize Japan by bringing in many cultural attainments such as the Chinese writing system, some of the grammatical features of Korean Language, and religious philosophies of India. Western influence after World War II did not greatly modify the deeply embedded patterns of thought, ethos, behavior, communication and decision-making basis. Two selected elements of the Japanese culture are analyzed: (1) a system of hierarchy which encompasses the sense of discipline, benevolence, self-depreciation, nonverbal behavior (use of the bow) and verbal behavior and (2) need for harmony which includes vagueness of language, advatism or use of intuition (awareness of other's needs and feeling via nonverbal cues) and the humane sensibility. These two elements still permeate today's' Japanese society and affect communication styles. There is a description of both the traditional consensus method of reaching agreement which emphasizes non-verbal aspects and the modern day method which encourages the verbal communication. In either case, the guiding spirit of decision-making is harmony and the goal is almost entirely directed toward cooperation. The cultural elements deeply entrenched in Japanese history provide this system of decision making. The American dialectic method of reaching agreement, on the contrary, places a high value on personal contributions, convictions, arguments and achievements. Conflict is a direct result of the American method and is considered to be desirable as well as necessary in order to reach a good conclusion. By the same token, disagreement occurs more frequently. This means that in an intercultural setting a great deal of miscommunication may be occurring. Under what conditions will critical incidents be likely to occur when the two negotiating groups encounter is hypothesized. The American method is contrasted with Japanese method and it was found that they are strikingly different and achieve different specific goals.

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This dissertation aims to expand the current one-dimensional game theory based model to a multidimensional model for multi-actor predictive analytics and generalize the concept of position to address problems where actors’ positions are distributed over a position spectrum. The one-dimensional models are used for the problems where actors are interacting in a single issue space only. This is less than an ideal assumption since, in most cases, players’ strategies may depend on the dynamics of multiple issues when dealing with other players. In this research, the one-dimensional model is expanded to N-Dimensional model by considering different positions, and separate salience values, across different axes for the players. The model predicts the outcome for a given problem by taking into account stakeholder’s positions in different dimensions and their conflicting perspectives. Furthermore, we generalize the concept of position in the model to include continuous positions for the actors throughout the position spectrum, enabling them to have more flexibility in defining their targets. We explore different possible functions to study the role of the position function and discuss appropriate distance measures for computing the distance between positions of actors. The proposed models are able to attain the same results as the previous one-dimensional models. In addition, to illustrate the capability of the proposed models, multiple case studies are designed and examined to assess the models’ capability and explainability.

yes / In modern chemical plants, it is essential to establish an effective maintenance strategy which will deliver financially driven results at optimised conditions, that is, minimum cost and time, by means of a criticality review of equipment in maintenance. In this article, a fuzzy logic-based criticality assessment system (FCAS) for the management of a local company’s equipment maintenance is introduced. This fuzzy system is shown to improve the conventional crisp criticality assessment system (CCAS). Results from case studies show that not only can the fuzzy logic-based system do what the conventional crisp system does but also it can output more criticality classifications with an improved reliability and a greater number of different ratings that account for fuzziness and individual voice of the decision-makers.

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<p>Decision-making groups use various resources that individual members possess such as knowledge, expertise, and information. Yet, little research addresses how individual members’ sensory experiences affect group deliberation processes. The current dissertation examines the effects of an individual’s prior sensory experience on group decision making. Drawing upon social decision schemes, it was hypothesized that the experiencedmember would be more influential in the group decision-making process than unexperienced members and that the experienced member’s decision is predictive of their group’s decision, referring to this decision scheme as the sensoryexperience rule. Two remote lab-based experiments were conducted in which participants met over Zoom and were asked to select an auditory option given a specific purpose (e.g., as background music for a hotel site). Each member was provided a verbal description of each of the provided auditory alternatives. Unlike the unexperienced members, the experienced member could also listen to the provided audio samples. In both studies, the sensory experience ruledescribed group choices well including situations in which the experienced member’s choice contradicted the majority’s choice in the group. Experienced members were perceived to use more credible, but not more vivid, narratives. Analyses of group discussions revealed that experienced members spoke more and were using a larger number of auditory expressions and metaphors than unexperienced members. Their narratives contained a smaller number of first-person singular pronouns and tended reflect lower spontaneity and cognitive processing. The studies underline the impact of sensory experience in group decision making that is different from general knowledge and expertise studied in previous research.</p>

京都大学 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(農学) / 甲第23941号 / 農博第2490号 / 新制||農||1090(附属図書館) / 学位論文||R4||N5376(農学部図書室) / 京都大学大学院農学研究科生物資源経済学専攻 / (主査)准教授 三谷 羊平, 教授 伊藤 順一, 教授 梅津 千恵子 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Agricultural Science / Kyoto University / DGAM

This research explores the process by which individual buying decisions are modified as a result of group discussion to arrive at a buying center decision. Existing evidence shows that, in some cases, group decisions are more cautious than those of individuals while in other situations they are more risky. The objective of this paper is to examine how individual buying center member choices are formed, how these choices and preferences are influenced by group discussion, and how the purchase decision context influences the riskiness of individual versus group purchasing discussions. One of the key concepts from prospect theory that guides an individual buying decision is the decision frame. However, little is known about how the decision frame of multiple individuals coming together to discuss a decision issue affects the group's overall decision. This research develops a model which describes (1) how an organizational buyer's individual choice is formed, (2) how the influence processes that transpire during buying center discussion changes those choices resulting in a different buying center choice, and (3) explores how the purchasing context may impact these processes. The model was tested in two controlled laboratory experiments in which 256 undergraduate business students made supplier selection decisions both individually and in groups based on information contained in four hypothetical procurement scenarios. The results were analyzed using a partially confounded experimental analysis of variance procedure and a series of t tests which tend to provide Support for the model. Specifically, the findings suggest that the decision frame used by individual buyers combined with group influence affects buying center choices. However, contrary to the predictions offered by prospect theory, when decision were framed as a gain, buyers selected the risky supplier and when decisions were framed as a loss, buyers selected the cautious supplier. For this study, no evidence was found to support the notion that group discussion intensifies the effect of the decision frame. Finally, whether the procurement is goods- or service-based seems to impact the effect of influence on the polarization of the buying centers choice. / Ph. D.