This study investigates the operational decision process for Okanagan Lake, a natural lake regulated by a dam at the outlet for flood control, irrigation and water supply purposes. In addition, the Lake supports a substantial tourist industry. The Lake is principally supplied by snowmelt and a forecast of total inflow volume during the critical runoff season is available to assist the operator. The operational decision process was found to differ from the sequential decision basis of many Operations Research techniques and the absence of information on costs and benefits precluded the use of conventional optimization procedures. The importance of making the best use of the inflow forecast to achieve the operational goals was recognized and was used as the basis of the decision analysis developed. The method developed assesses possible immediate operational decisions by evaluating the effectiveness of future discharges to correct for past decision errors. The evaluation is made in terms of the probabilities of exceeding Operational constraints and of achieving operational goals. The method involves simulation of sets of monthly inflows for the remainder of the runoff season given an inflow volume forecast and knowledge of the probable accuracy of the forecast; computation of water levels which would occur with various operating procedures; frequency analysis of the resulting levels; interpretation of the frequencies as probabilities; and presentation of the resulting information describing the operational situation in readily assimilable form. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Civil Engineering, Department of / Graduate

Entrepreneurs make decisions that influence subsequent decisions and future performance. The dissertation studies such sequences of decisions by using dynamic programming. This approach allows one to describe the decision process over time and, in some cases, it prescribes how business performance can be improved. An analytical approach helps to contribute a new dimension to entrepreneurship research and it encourages multidisciplinary work by allowing existing methodologies from various (analytical) disciplines to be applied to entrepreneurial problems. The dissertation focuses on research questions that invoke effort allocation in sequential decision-making at early development stages of a new venture creation. The dissertation is composed of three separate research studies. What dominates the entrepreneur's decision process initially is the effort allocation problem in sharing time between an existing job and committing to the new venture. The first study describes how this time-sharing is done and characterizes when is the best time to leave the wage job and become a full-time entrepreneur. I also show that the optimal time-allocation policy is driven by the entrepreneur's tolerance for work and by how returns behave with respect to time allocation in the venture. It is important to understand resource allocations to internal activities such as product development and customer recruitment. The second study focuses on new product development and it investigates how the flow of a new venture's funding affects the development of a new product. I prescribe the optimal release time for the new product and describe how this strategy is affected by the expected amount of funding and its uncertainty. I also identify industrial and entrepreneurial characteristics that generate various behaviors for the rate of change in the return on product quality as investment in the product is increased. The newly developed product must be bought to make the business start-up successful. The third study investigates how an entrepreneur makes decisions over time in allocating effort to building and exploiting a customer base so as to maximize profit. I study what a rational entrepreneur will do when faced with the allocation of effort to different customer categories. I also provide guidelines for improving the performance of an entrepreneur who may not be acting optimally. In these three investigations a dynamic programming approach is utilized to study various sequential decision processes of an entrepreneur during the development process of new venture creation. / Business, Sauder School of / Graduate

This work gives an account of an empirical study on the assessment of judgments of individuals in a group. The phenomenon of judgment or decision making in groups appears in various contexts. However we are interested in situations where each member of a group is required to give independently of other members of the group, his most informed and reasoned judgment on a controversial issue. Nonetheless, it is of interest to gain knowledge about the importance of various judgments about the issue, and also of the arguments (or reasons) put forward by the judges to support their judgments. Such situations of judgmentmaking raise methodological problems for collecting judgmental data, and methods, such as, face-to-face discussion or the Delphi method may not be appropriate. To circumvent this problem, a new method called 'Qualitative Controlled Feedback' (Q.C.F.) was developed by Press [13]. Our aim in the present work is to examine the workings of the method by its application to a real world situation. With this aim, judgments (and other data of interest) were collected, using a three-stage Q.C.F. survey, from a random sample group of Faculty and Staff members of the University of British Columbia on a question related to the issue of whether or not the University should build an Indoor Aquatic Center on the campus. The data was analysed from an exploratory viewpoint. It was observed that qualitative controlled feedback creates a good interaction (in the sense of exchanging arguments and reasons) among the group members. Change in judgment occurred as subjects went from one stage to another after having qualitative feedback of information. By comparing with a control group of subjects, it was also found that qualitative feedback was able to produce more rational judgments than without any feedback. The distributions of judgment obtained in this empirical study bear significant implications for decision making. The distributions were found to be bimodal and represented two opposing groups of thought. Other results involve, regression analysis, transition probabilities of judgment change from one stage to another, analysis of judgment change behavior, importance of reasons, effect of non-response on judgment distributions and analysis of confidence in judgment. Finally, it was found that the method of Qualitative Controlled Feedback can be fruitfully applied to situations of practical interest. / Science, Faculty of / Mathematics, Department of / Graduate

The purposes of the present study are to attempt to discover if there is a predictable relationship between conflict and an increase in the number of choice alternatives, to specifically determine if this hypothesized relationship exists in a predictable order in children, to endeavor to show that this hypothesized relationship is such that generalization of application to a natural environment is credible, and to attempt to discover if there are sex differences that may influence this relationship.

A general lack of timely and suitable decision-making information remained a challenge in tertiary education institutions in South Africa for many years. A design science research study was conducted and dashboard prototypes were iteratively designed and developed in the real environment to investigate how dashboards can be applied to overcome the shortcoming. The study contributes in the area of dashboard frameworks for tertiary education institutions and in the design science research of dashboards in the discipline of business process monitoring (BPM) or business intelligence (BI). The framework proposes conceptual- and design elements, a design- and development process and was proven through theory-linked research. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria,2015. / tm2015 / Information Science / Unrestricted

While studies exist that compare the different dynamics between cohabitation and marriage, few studies focus on comparing the consumer decision-making process of both types of unions.

Feedback is often necessary to provide guidance for future decisions, and factors relating to feedback, including the way feedback information is framed, how frequently it is provided, and the relevance of that feedback in relation to one's decision, have been designated as influential for decision making tendencies. Unfortunately, research on what produces the most effective feedback is mixed, and the relationship between these factors and resulting evaluative and behavioral outcomes in less clear. Four studies explored the relationship between feedback frame and frequency by addressing whether overall task feedback framed positively and receiving more frequent trial outcome feedback led to more positive performance evaluations and improvements in subsequent task performance (Studies 1A and 1B), how these evaluative and behavioral outcomes varied across different trial feedback frequency intervals (Study 2A), and whether more relevant trial feedback influenced the pattern of these results (Study 2B). Across the four studies, it was noted that the frequency of trial feedback was more influential for task performance outcomes, while the overall task feedback frame was more influential for performance evaluation outcomes. In addition, more relevant outcome feedback was seen to influence the relationship of feedback variables more for performance evaluations than task performance. Taken together, these studies provide some clarity as to how different types and presentations of feedback produce different evaluative and behavioral outcomes and show initial direction as to when framing task feedback and providing trial feedback more frequently can lead to better, more normatively correct decision making. Theoretical and practical implications, as well as reasons why effects were not consistent across studies, are also discussed.

Ubiquitous computing results in access to vast amounts of data, which is changing the way humans interact with each other, with computers, and with their environments. Information is literally at our fingertips with touchscreen technology, but it is not valuable until it is understood. As a result, selecting which information to use in a decision process is a challenge in the current information environment (Lu & Yuan, 2011). The purpose of this dissertation was to investigate how individual decision makers, in different decision contexts, determine when to stop collecting information given the availability of virtually unlimited information. Decision makers must make an ultimate decision, but also must make a decision that he or she has enough information to make the final decision (Browne, Pitts, & Wetherbe, 2007). In determining how much information to collect, researchers found that people engage in ‘satisficing' in order to make decisions, particularly when there is more information than it is possible to manage (Simon, 1957). A more recent elucidation of information use relies on the idea of stopping rules, identifying five common stopping rules information seekers use: mental list, representational stability, difference threshold, magnitude threshold, and single criterion (Browne et al., 2007). Prior research indicates a lack of understanding in the areas of information use (Prabha, Connaway, Olszewski, & Jenkins, 2007) and information overload (Eppler & Mengis, 2004) in Information Systems literature. Moreover, research indicates a lack of clarity in what information should be used in different decision contexts (Kowalczyk & Buxmann, 2014). The increase in the availability of information further complicates and necessitates research in this area. This dissertation seeks to fill these gaps in the literature by determining how information use changes across decision contexts and the relationships between stopping rules. Two unique methodologies were used to test the hypotheses in the conceptual model, which both contribute to research on information stopping rules. One tracks the participant during an online search, the second asks follow-up survey questions on a Likert scale. One of four search tasks (professional or personal context and a big data analytics understanding or restaurant location search) was randomly assigned to each participant. Results show different stopping rules are more useful for different decision contexts. Specifically, professional tasks are more likely to use stopping rules with an a priori decision on how much information to collect, while personal tasks encourage users to determine how much information to collect during the search process. The analysis also shows that different stopping rules have different emphases on quality and quantity of information. Specifically, representational stability requires both a high quality and quantity of information, while other stopping rules indicate a preference for one of the two. Finally, information quality and quantity ultimately have a positive relationship with decision confidence, satisfaction, and efficiency. The findings of this research are useful to practitioners and academics tackling issues with the availability of more information. As systems are designed for information search, understanding information stopping rules become increasingly important.

Florida has 906,465 residential properties facing substantial flood risk, making it imperative to understand how the public may perceive and respond to this risk. Providing people with scientific information may not be enough to impact behavior and decrease losses from flood events. We show participants (n = 20) scientific flood risk graphics and ask behavioral questions to evaluate responses based on the rational actor paradigm (RAP), psychometric paradigm, and cultural theory. We find results consistent with the RAP in 48% of cases, primarily in low risk scenarios. Participants from high income households are more likely to make rational decisions (80%) than those from low income households (~37%). Feelings of dread potentially help explain 40% of deviations from the RAP, while trust in flood experts helps explain 85% of non-RAP cases. Future flood risk communication should incorporate dread and trust in experts into messaging considerations as rationality alone is insufficient. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.S.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2021. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

The aim of this exploratory study is to gain an understanding of the factors which influence the decision making of news editors in South Africa. The independent news media is an important source of information in modern society. It has a significant influence on people’s perceptions of the political and social issues facing a society. However it is not a neutral institution as it is a commercial business driven by profit. Within news organisations, editors are key decision makers as they decide how resources are allocated and which stories enter the public domain. The decisions taken by editors are immediately open to public scrutiny and often impact a range of stakeholders in society. In this study an exploratory phenomenological approach was used, as this approach seeks to capture the meaning of an experience through an examination of an individual’s lived experiences. To achieve this, twelve, in-depth interviews were conducted with editors, with over 85 years of editorial experience, in order to establish which factors influence their decision making process. The data was analysed using content and frequency analysis. The main factors which the editors identified as influencing their decision making process when evaluating a story included the following: the relevance to the audience, accuracy, the public interest, newsworthiness and entertainment value. In difficult editorial decisions which involved a trade-off between two or more important factors, the editors showed a strong commitment to the journalistic values of acting in the public interest and newsworthiness. Consultation, knowledge and personal attributes emerged as important competencies in ensuring good editorial decisions. Copyright / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted