In Hidden Profiles gelingt es Gruppen häufig nicht, ihr Potenzial, bessere Entscheidungen als jedes ihrer Mitglieder zu treffen, zu erfüllen. Für dieses Phänomen wurden bereits verschiedene Ursachen ermittelt. Dazu gehören insbesondere Verzerrungen im Inhalt der Gruppendiskussion sowie der Bewertung von entscheidungsrelevanten Informationen durch die Gruppenmitglieder. In der vorliegenden Arbeit wird nun ein weiterer Aspekt individueller Informationsverarbeitung untersucht, dessen Verzerrung einen nachteiligen Einfluss auf die Entscheidungsqualität von Diskussionsgruppen haben könnte: der individuelle Recall bezüglich aufgabenrelevanter Informationen. Dabei werden zwei Verzerrungen postuliert: Ein Erinnerungsvorteil von Informationen, welche die ursprüngliche Präferenz des jeweiligen Gruppenmitglieds unterstützen sowie eine Verzerrung zugunsten von Informationen, die bereits vor der Diskussion verfügbar sind. Es wird angenommen, dass beide Verzerrungen einen negativen Einfluss auf die Entscheidungsqualität des Individuums und somit auch der gesamten Gruppe haben. Diese Annahmen wurden in einer Reihe von vier Experimenten und der Reanalyse zweier früherer Studien untersucht. Insgesamt wurde dabei Evidenz für einen Erinnerungsvorteil eigener, vor der Diskussion bekannter Informationen gegenüber in der Diskussion neu gelernten Informationen gefunden. Belege für einen Erinnerungsvorteil präferenzkonsistenter Informationen zeigten sich dagegen nur vereinzelt und in einer metaanalytischen Zusammenfassung nicht in signifikantem Maße. Eine experimentelle Manipulation der Erinnerungsverzerrungen liefert keinen Hinweis auf einen Zusammenhang zwischen diesen Faktoren und der Entscheidungsqualität in Hidden-Profile- Situationen. Eine Verzerrung der individuellen Erinnerung im Hinblick auf entscheidungsrelevante Informationen ist somit nach den Ergebnissen dieser Arbeit keine sinnvolle Erweiterung der bestehenden Erklärungsansätze für das Scheitern von Entscheidungsgruppen an der Realisierung von Synergien.

Diese Dissertation untersucht aus der Perspektive der ökologischen Rationalität (ÖR) die Frage, wie Menschen Entscheidungen in sozialen Kontexten treffen, z.B. in Gruppen oder mit Hilfe von Ratschlägen. Zentral waren die Fragen, wie und welche Umweltfaktoren die Verwendung und Güte von verschiedenen Entscheidungsstrategien beeinflussen. Ziel war es, den Forschungsrahmen der ÖR mit der Gruppenforschung und Literatur zum Thema Ratgeben zu verknüpfen, um für die jeweiligen Forschungsstränge neue Erkenntnisse zu gewinnen. Im ersten Projekt wurden die Leistungen von Einzelpersonen und Zweiergruppen in einer Strategielernaufgabe miteinander verglichen. Aufgabe war es, mit Hilfe von Feedback, die Strategie zu lernen, die adaptiv in Bezug auf die Struktur der Umwelt war. Dabei war es entweder adaptiv, auf den besten diskriminierenden Cue zu setzen und die weniger validen Informationen zu ignorieren (take-the-best), oder aber alle vorhandenen Informationen zu verrechnen (weighted additive). Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass sowohl Einzelpersonen als auch Gruppen die jeweils beste Strategie erlernten, wobei Gruppen einen schnelleren Lernerfolg zeigten, wenn take-the-best adaptiv war. Das zweite Projekt untersuchte, ob Gruppen Entscheidungsstrategien verwenden, die auf ihre Zusammensetzung hinsichtlich aufgabenrelevanter Faktoren abgestimmt sind. Ergebnisse eines Experiments, in dem 3-Personen-Gruppen eine Paarvergleichsaufgabe bearbeiteten, zeigten, dass Gruppen dazu in der Lage sind, den Strategien zu folgen, die am erfolgversprechendsten sind. Das dritte Projekt untersuchte den Einfluss von Aufgabenschwierigkeit auf die Güte und Verwendung von zwei häufig verwendeten Strategien (mitteln und auswählen) zur Integration von Ratschlägen. Wahrgenommene Aufgabenschwierigkeit schlug sich in verschiedenen statistischen Merkmalen der Umweltstruktur nieder, was wiederum die potentielle Güte der Strategien. Zudem stimmten Personen ihre Strategien auf die Aufgabenschwierigkeit ab. / This dissertation is an investigation from an ecological rationality (ER) perspective of how people make decisions in social contexts, for example, when people collectively make decisions in small groups or with the help of another person’s advice. Of particular interest were the questions of what and how environmental factors influence the use and performance of different decision strategies. The studies thus were aimed at linking the framework of ER with research on group decision making and advice taking, respectively, in order to derive new insights for the related research streams. A first project compared the performances of individuals and two-person groups in a strategy-learning task. The task was to learn with the help of feedback the most adaptive strategy for a given task environment. One environment favored take-the-best (i.e., the strategy to rely on the best discriminating cue and ignore the rest); the second environment favored the weighted additive strategy, which weights and adds all available cues. Results show that individuals and dyads learned to select the most appropriate strategy over time, with a steeper learning rate in dyads when take-the-best was adaptive. A second project investigated whether small groups apply decision strategies conditional on the group’s composition in terms of task-relevant features. Results of an experiment with three-member groups working on a paired-comparison task support the hypothesis that groups indeed adaptively apply the strategy that leads to the highest theoretically achievable performance. A third project investigated the impact of perceived task difficulty on the performance and use of choosing and averaging, two prominent advice-taking strategies. Perceived task difficulty was reflected in the statistical properties of the environment, which, in turn, determined the theoretical accuracy of choosing and averaging. Further, people were found to adaptively use the strategies in different task environments.

Para auxiliar os gestores das organizações em seu processo decisório, o emprego de métodos de apoio à tomada de decisão é utilizado desde o século passado, a partir da década de 1950, havendo forte ênfase nas questões econômico-financeiras e operacionais das alternativas. Atualmente, o uso de métodos que consideram as questões relativas à sustentabilidade ambiental das alternativas é um assunto que tem despertado interesse, conforme se observa na literatura recente, ainda que relativamente escassa. Contudo, a práxis da maioria dos métodos multicritério existentes tem embasamento no tomador de decisão como um indivíduo ao invés de um grupo e a ampla diferença entre o comportamento de um indivíduo e de um grupo é negligenciado. Neste novo tipo de abordagem, soluções para resolver os conflitos que inevitavelmente surgem da necessidade de atender os diferentes critérios dos agentes envolvidos devem ser propostas. Para estes casos, a Teoria dos Jogos é reconhecidamente uma abordagem que permite a resolução de conflitos por meio da avaliação de diferentes cenários com diferentes alternativas. Neste sentido, a presente pesquisa apresenta um método multicriterial, baseado em indicadores de sustentabilidade em conjunto com a Teoria dos Jogos e o equilíbrio de Nash, para que seja uma das ferramentas de apoio na escolha do sistema de tratamento de esgoto sanitário para municípios. Para tornar possível a metodologia proposta, indicadores de sustentabilidade foram selecionados para serem usados como critérios na avaliação de alternativas de sistema de tratamento de esgoto. Além disto, vetores de pesos para os critérios foram definidos para representar perfis de jogadores. A partir disto, foi proposta uma função de pagamentos e um exemplo foi gerado a partir da definição do jogo e seus jogadores, tendo sido o software Gambit utilizado para encontrar o equilíbrio de Nash do jogo. Como resultado, a aplicação da metodologia proposta permite tratar o processo de escolha de ETE como um processo de escolha em grupo, ao invés de uma escolha individual, e visa contribuir para quebrar o paradigma da busca pela eficiência baseada nos critérios formados pelo binômio técnico e econômico na escolha de sistemas de tratamento de esgoto. Desta forma, a aplicação do novo método visa proporcionar meios para se enxergar o mesmo problema sobre diferentes focos e, com a utilização de diferentes critérios, poderia facilitar o processo da tomada de decisão para a escolha da alternativa técnica, econômica, ambiental e socialmente mais adequada. / To assist the managers of organizations in their decision making, the use of methods to support the decision are used since the last century, from the 1950s, with a strong emphasis on economic issues, financial and operational details of the treatment plants sewage. Currently, the use of methods to consider issues relating to the environmental sustainability of wastewater treatment plants is a subject that has attracted attention, as shown in recent studies, although relatively scarce. However, the practice of most existing methods are based on multicriteria decision-maker as an individual instead of a group and the wide difference between the behavior of an individual and a group is neglected. In this new approach, solutions to resolve the conflicts that inevitably arise from the need to meet the various criteria of the parties involved must be proposed. For these cases, game theory is admittedly an approach that allows the resolution of conflicts through the evaluation of different scenarios with different alternatives. With this research we sought to develop a measurement methodology based on indicators of sustainability in conjunction with game theory and Nash equilibrium, that is one of tools to support the choice of system of sewage treatment for a particular municipality . For the proposed new methodology, sustainability indicators were selected to be used as criteria in the evaluation of alternative system of sewage treatment and weight vectors for the criteria were defined as profiles of players. From this, we choose a function of reward and an example was generated from the definition of the game and its players, the software Gambit was used to find the Nash equilibrium of the game. The proposed methodology allows us to treat the process of choosing ETE as a selection process in group, rather than an individual choice, and aims to deconstruct the paradigm of the quest for efficiency based on criteria formed the duo in the technical and economic choice of systems for wastewater treatment. Thus, applying the new method aims at providing means to see the same problem on different sides, and with the use of different criteria, could facilitate the process of decision making for the choice of alternative technical, economic, environmental and socially suitable.

<p>Сложеност процеса доношења одлука у водопривреди лежи у чињеници да су проблеми који се решавају често слабо структурирани, због чега је неопходно њихово учвршћивање хеуристичким техникама до нивоа када се проблем може решити применом математичких модела вишекритеријумске оптимизације и анализе.<br />Групно доношење одлука у водопривреди није новост у свету, али коначнаг одређења методологије у овој области још увек нема. Постојање конфликата између различитих страна, заинтересованих за проблематику водопривреде, између врста коришћења вода, као и самих корисника вода указује на сложеност проблемтике. Сложеност увећава постојање великог броја алтернатива, које треба вредновати према великом броју критеријума.<br />Методологија избора учесника у доношењу одлука у водопривреди и одређивања њихових међусобних значаја, који је предложена у дисертацији, заснована је на коришћењу техника стратегијског менаџмента, прогностичких метода, гласачких метода, метода вишекритеријумске анализе и оптимизације и ГИС технологијама.<br />Досадашњи систем управљања водним ресурсима у Србији има слабости јер није у довољној мери заснован на корисничким захтевима, а свака промена захтева обично доводи до дуготрајне процедуре за измену статуса корисника, или измену квалитативних и квантитативних захтева у односу на водне ресурсе.<br />Развијени партиципативни модел, који подрзумева дефинисање конзистентног поступка за избор учесника у процесу управљања сливом, као и одређивање њихових међусобних односа и значаја, у садашњим условима и условима пуне изграђености Регионалног хидросистема демонстриран је на примеру слива реке Криваје.<br />Слив Криваје одабран је због вишеструке сложености водопривредне проблематике, јер је вишенаменски, вишекориснички, са поделама надлежности, како локалних самоуправа, тако и водопривредне делатности. Такође, Криваја је прекогранични водоток, што проблематику усложњава и у међудржавном, ресурсном, економском и политичком смислу. Методологија приказана у дисертацији примењива је и на друге сливове, &#39;оптерећене&#39; вишенаманским, вишекорисничким конфликтима, као и конфликтима надлежности.<br />Основна карактеристика модела је конзистентна структуираност, модул консензусног одлучивања у конфликтним и хазардним условима и употреба савремених математичко-компјутерских метода и модела и информационих технологија који, поред осталог, синергијски указују на доминантне учеснике у процесу одлучивања.</p> / <p>Složenost procesa donošenja odluka u vodoprivredi leži u činjenici da su problemi koji se rešavaju često slabo strukturirani, zbog čega je neophodno njihovo učvršćivanje heurističkim tehnikama do nivoa kada se problem može rešiti primenom matematičkih modela višekriterijumske optimizacije i analize.<br />Grupno donošenje odluka u vodoprivredi nije novost u svetu, ali konačnag određenja metodologije u ovoj oblasti još uvek nema. Postojanje konflikata između različitih strana, zainteresovanih za problematiku vodoprivrede, između vrsta korišćenja voda, kao i samih korisnika voda ukazuje na složenost problemtike. Složenost uvećava postojanje velikog broja alternativa, koje treba vrednovati prema velikom broju kriterijuma.<br />Metodologija izbora učesnika u donošenju odluka u vodoprivredi i određivanja njihovih međusobnih značaja, koji je predložena u disertaciji, zasnovana je na korišćenju tehnika strategijskog menadžmenta, prognostičkih metoda, glasačkih metoda, metoda višekriterijumske analize i optimizacije i GIS tehnologijama.<br />Dosadašnji sistem upravljanja vodnim resursima u Srbiji ima slabosti jer nije u dovoljnoj meri zasnovan na korisničkim zahtevima, a svaka promena zahteva obično dovodi do dugotrajne procedure za izmenu statusa korisnika, ili izmenu kvalitativnih i kvantitativnih zahteva u odnosu na vodne resurse.<br />Razvijeni participativni model, koji podrzumeva definisanje konzistentnog postupka za izbor učesnika u procesu upravljanja slivom, kao i određivanje njihovih međusobnih odnosa i značaja, u sadašnjim uslovima i uslovima pune izgrađenosti Regionalnog hidrosistema demonstriran je na primeru sliva reke Krivaje.<br />Sliv Krivaje odabran je zbog višestruke složenosti vodoprivredne problematike, jer je višenamenski, višekorisnički, sa podelama nadležnosti, kako lokalnih samouprava, tako i vodoprivredne delatnosti. Takođe, Krivaja je prekogranični vodotok, što problematiku usložnjava i u međudržavnom, resursnom, ekonomskom i političkom smislu. Metodologija prikazana u disertaciji primenjiva je i na druge slivove, &#39;opterećene&#39; višenamanskim, višekorisničkim konfliktima, kao i konfliktima nadležnosti.<br />Osnovna karakteristika modela je konzistentna struktuiranost, modul konsenzusnog odlučivanja u konfliktnim i hazardnim uslovima i upotreba savremenih matematičko-kompjuterskih metoda i modela i informacionih tehnologija koji, pored ostalog, sinergijski ukazuju na dominantne učesnike u procesu odlučivanja.</p> / <p>The complexity of the decision-making process in water management lies in the fact that problems, to be solved, are often poorly structured, making it necessary to strenghten them by heuristic techniques to the level where problem can be solved by using mathematical models of multi-criteria optimization and analysis.<br />Group decision-making in water management is not unknown, but the final determination of methodology in this area is still missing.<br />The existence of conflicts between the various parties interested in the issue of water management, between a type of water use and water users themselves, indicates the complexity of the problems. The complexity increases the presence of a large number of alternatives that must be evaluated against a number of criteria.<br />The methodology of selection of participants in decision-making in water management and determining their mutual importance; importance of each one among the others; importance of each of them among the group; importance of each of participants, which is presented in the dissertation, is based on the use of techniques of strategic management, forecasting methods, the voting methods, multi-criteria analysis and optimization, and GIS technologies.<br />The current system of water resources management in Serbia has a weakness because it is not sufficiently based on user requirements, and any requirement&rsquo;s change usually leads to time-consuming procedures for changing the status of users, or alteration of qualitative and quantitative requirements in relation to water resources.<br />Developed participatory model, which implies defining a consistent procedure for the selection of participants in the river basin management, as well as determining their relationships and importance in current terms and conditions of the full construction of the Regional hydro system, has been demonstrated on the example of the basin of the Krivaja river.<br />Confluence Krivaja has been chosen because of multiple complexities of water management issues, its multipurpose, multi-user, the division of responsibilities among local self-governments, as well as water management work. Also, Krivaja is cross-border watercourse, which complicates the issue in the interstate, resource, economic and political sense. The methodology presented in the dissertation is also applicable to other basins &#39;loaded&#39; by multipurpose and multi-user conflicts, as well as conflicts of jurisdiction.<br />The basic characteristic of the model is consistent structure, the module of consensual decision-making in conflict and hazardous conditions, and the use of modern mathematical-computerized methods and models, as well as information technologies which, among other things, the synergistic indicate the dominant participants in the decision-making process.</p>

Brownfield restoration and remediation is a growing concern across the United States. Brownfields are vacant or abandoned properties with real or perceived contamination. Successfully restoring these properties requires strong stakeholder collaboration, including the local community. The purpose of this study was to explore the complexities of creating a community garden on a residential brownfield site located in a low-income, high-minority neighborhood and to gain a better understanding of how a community based project develops and impacts individuals from the community. Specifically, the study investigated who chose to participate in the project, what motivated individuals to become involved and remain committed, and how individual's understanding of the project's risks and plans changed throughout his/her involvement. The case study followed 17 participants through the first year of the Emerson Street Garden, a brownfield restoration project in the King Neighborhood of northeast Portland, Oregon. Findings showed that individuals were attracted to different styles of outreach materials based on their own personality and preferences. The desire to improve the community was an important motivation for all the participants but personal motivation was not connected to knowledge retention. While the Emerson Working Group was successful at distributing knowledge to all its members, individual's flexibility to new ideas was critical for continued involvement in the working group. In conclusion, the study found that a "one-size-fits-all" method for engaging community members in urban restoration and renewal projects does not exist; however, there are best practices that can be applied to most situations. Implications for practice and further research are discussed.

The present work explores improvements in group decision-making. It begins with a practical example using state-of-the-art techniques for a complex, high-risk decision. We show how these techniques can reveal a better alternative. Although we created an improved decision process, decision-makers were apt to protect their own organizations instead of the project. This tendency was reduced over the course of the decision-making process but inspired the first conceptual component of this work. The first concept describes the “Cost of Conflict” that can arise in a group decision, using game theory to represent the non-cooperative approach and comparing the outcome to the cooperative approach. We demonstrate that it is possible for the group to settle on a non-Paretto Nash equilibrium. The sensitivity of the decision-maker weights is revealed which led to the second conceptual portion of this work. The second concept applies social network theory to study the influence between decision-makers in a group decision. By examining the number and strength of connections between decision-makers, we build from intrinsically derived weights to extrinsically derived weights by adding the network influences from other decision-makers. The two conceptual approaches provide a descriptive view of non-cooperative decisions where decision-makers still influence each other. These concepts suggest a prescriptive approach to achieving a higher group utility.

¡§Individual¡¨is the basic analytic unit in a pluralistic society. Especially, phenomenon of public affairs is essence of the problem and is based on individual cognition, hidden in group behavior. The individual cognition forms group judgment and interpersonal influence in the group. This interpersonal influence process may simplify as the power relations between group members, the communication network and the interaction form in the group, and the opinion relations within the group (French, 1956). The conflict is the essential situation of interpersonal influence and also is one kind of relational form and phenomenon for group judgment. Therefore, it is necessary to understand the interpersonal influence and conduct interpersonal mutual cooperation in the public affairs area. The group decision-making (or judgment) can be explored based on observable individual preference and group decision-making. That can infer unobservable interpersonal influence. This interpersonal influence process transforms the individual judgment into the group decision-making. There are two stages in interpersonal influence process, including opinion formation for individual members, and compromise among group members. Namely, the individual might revise his or her preference voluntarily. The group integrates the revised members¡¦ judgments into group decision-making. That is, the group process resembles the process which individual integrates multi-cues like information integration theory (IIT) (Friedkin, 2005; Sniezek et al., 1989). The average cognitive algebra pattern in IIT may measure the interpersonal influence effectively. The theories of group decision-making are still insufficient. For example, social power theory and social comparison theory explain the concept of choice shift, but not positivism. Social decision scheme (SDS) employs decision scheme to predict the group decision-making, but it is insufficient for explaining the group decision-making process. Although social dilemma explores both individual level and group level, it cannot provide the weighting method. Cognitive conflict paradigm (CCP) discusses judgment policy shift, but preference shift is still not mentioned. Although CCP focuses on interpersonal learning, it does not propose how to weight interpersonal influence. The functional measurement theory in IIT may supplement insufficiencies in these theories.. The research utilizes the concept and the method of IIT, which prodivides experimental validity for explaining the complex interpersonal influence process by using social weight. This research uses budget allocation as discussion cases. Interpersonal conflicts are divided by the cognitive conflict and the interest conflict. By using social judgment theory (SJT), this research can analyze cognitive difference in the case of cognitive conflict. Besides, using quasi-experimental procedure in IIT, the findings of this research include: 1. In the group process, group members¡¦ judgments are integrated to group decision-making based on unequal-weight rule mostly. Members¡¦ social weights are different and depend on the level of members¡¦ preferences. 2. The members in different groups have the same preferences initially. Although social weights of these members are not significant difference in statistic, these members still appear the differences between individuals. 3. In cognitive conflict case, the group consensus is not consistently accompanied by cognitive consensus. 4. The group influence results from normative social influence, rather than from informational social influence. 5. It shows that there is negative correlation between social weight and normative effect. Besides, social weight and comprise degree also show negative.correlation 6. The cognitive feedback and the outcome feedback don¡¦t affect decision-making result. 7. The relationship between social weight and the degree of satisfaction is not supported. The social weight and the fairness of decision-making process show significant correlation 8. The subjects¡¦ decision-making performances in the study don¡¦t show significant difference

iv In this study, an Analytic Network Process (ANP) and Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) based approach was developed in order to measure the performance of customer-based Research and Development projects being executed in T&Uuml / BTAKSAGE, Defense Research and Development Institute, under the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey. In order to evaluate project performance, many criteria, containing various subcriteria were determined. In order to handle the interdependencies among the criteria and the sub-criteria, ANP was used. The ANP model generated in this study is a hybrid model consisting of both a hierarchy and a network. The pairwise comparison matrices that were built up for defining the importance and influences of the criteria/sub-criteria in the ANP model were formed as interval judgments from a group decision making process, based on data obtained from a questionnaire conducted among the experts in the Institute. From the interval pairwise comparison matrices, weight intervals for the sub-criteria were determined and these bounds were used as assurance region constraints in a super-efficiency DEA model, through which the project ranking was obtained. Taking into consideration that there may occur some missing values in some projects for some of the sub-criteria, the superefficiency DEA model was extended to handle missing data. The model was applied to a real case study on performance evaluation of the ongoing customer-based projects in the Institute. For comparison purposes, the case study was also solved by two other approaches.

Information technology has played several important roles in group decision making, such as communication support and decision support. Little is known about how information technology can be used to persuade members of a group to reach a consensus. In this dissertation, I aim to address the issues that are related to the role of visual representation technology (VRT) for persuasion in a forecasting context. VRTs are not traditional graphical representation technologies. VRTs can select, transform, and present data in a rich visual format that facilitates exploration, comprehension, and sense-making. The first study investigates conditions under which teams are likely to increase the use of VRTs and how the use of VRTs affects teams' consensus development and decision performance. The second study evaluates the effects of influence types and information technology on a choice shift. A choice shift is the tendency of group members to shift their initial positions to a more extreme direction following discussion. A choice shift is also called group polarization. To complement my first two studies, I conduct a laboratory experiment in my third study. I explore the effect of VRTs and team composition on a choice shift in group confidence.

This thesis explores the alternative dispute resolution method of family group decision making that is used in child welfare in Ontario. Using a qualitative case study, my research sought to answer the question: What are the experiences of caregivers who have participated in family group decision making in the District of Algoma? I examined the legislative framework, policy directive and guiding policies surrounding the use of FGDM in child welfare in the District of Algoma in rural Ontario. I also collected data through interviews with five participants and transcribed and analyzed using thematic analysis. The themes that emerged relate to the process of FGDM empowering families, the outcomes for children, and the ability for families to implement and maintain long-term plans for children. These themes and sub themes are discussed along with the implications for policy and practice and directions for future research.