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Although everyone knows that rational thinking is so important, people still always make some decisions by irrational emotion. Previous studies of making decisions suggest that decision makers mainly maximize their own profit based on economical principle and also with the ability to assess every decision selection¡¦s benefit and cost. They also indicate that most management level decision makers may use analytical, rational and logical ways to analyze every problem they encounter and when it refers to decision making. In our daily life, what do we exactly conform to the suggestion of rational decision making theories? Is irrational decision making with emotional involvement consistent with our daily choice and important decision? People make all kinds of decisions no matter they are important or easy decision for himself /herself or for the others. In other word, decisions build up and make up our life, so it is important to understand what kind of factors affects our step of decision making. Through reviewing of the essays and theses, induction of the interview information, we realize rational and irrational factors intervene into the process of decision making. In terms to decision making, we choose ¡§marriage¡¨ as our research scope, discuss rational and irrational factor affect decision makers¡¦ thinking through the four step of decision making: information collection, development of programs, selection of program and implementation of program. In the step of information collection, individual will search for rational consideration and irrational element. Decision maker will make the decision and influence by irrational factors which include affection, emotion and feeling. When it comes to implementation, some ideas emerge in their mind.

BACKGROUND: When it comes to corporate decision making, the traditional rational model suggests that deliberative analysis yields good results. Thus, when contemplating strategic moves, executives are “required” to conduct deliberative analyses. As today’s business environment is becoming increasingly complex and fast-paced, however, executives often face the dilemma of having to make carefully considered strategic decisions on the one hand and not having enough time on the other hand. Intuition offers an efficient solution in this situation. PURPOSE: The purpose of this study is to investigate how corporate executives employ both rationality and intuition in making strategic decisions under uncertain, complex and time-pressured circumstances. RESEARCH METHOD: We conducted three face-to-face interviews with executives from three companies in Sweden. Each interview lasted around one hour.    RESULTS: Drawing on previous psychological and managerial research, we argue that rationality and intuition are better viewed as being complementary rather than separate. Findings from the study suggest that intuition could serve as an effective and efficient means for managers to make strategic decisions; and that intuition indeed plays a role in strategic decision making under complex, uncertain and time limited contexts.

In an era of rapid charter school growth, this study sought to examine rational decision making for special populations in Texas urban charter schools. To investigate differences among charters, I categorized the schools into three groups: network corporate charters, community corporate charters, and intergovernmental charters. Quantitative analysis, including the use of ANOVAs and Tukeys, helped identify differences in expenditures among the three charter groups. Intergovernmental charters focused their spending on teachers and student programs, including programs for students with disabilities and ESL and bilingual programs. Community corporate charters spent less in most categories, except, in the majority of years, for social work, food services, cocurricular activities, and data processing. Network charters channeled their funding into areas such as school leadership, facilities, security and monitoring, and accelerated education. I then used qualitative analysis to understand how charter school administrators decide to spend their money in a way that is most cost-effective for their operations relative to their student populations. I completed 20 interviews with charter school administrators in four Texas cities. Administrators in charters were aware of the competitive accountability and fiscal environment in which they were running their schools. This resulted in cost-effective rational decision making. Charter administrators were also under significant financial stress and did not believe that their schools were adequately funded, though some charters still sought to make a profit or increase their net assets. To make up the difference in funding, some charters have relied on grants and donations from other corporations. Administrators also discussed special populations of students, such as ESL/bilingual students and students with disabilities. / text

Economists have convulsively maintained the assumption that humans are able to arrive at decisions by perfect deductive rationality, despite the fact empirical evidences are showing otherwise. The contradicting evidences have resulted in a personal view that instead of finding a unified theory about decision-making, a sound approach would be to study how humans in fact are reasoning in specific contexts. The context of interest for this paper is where it could be assumed humans’ persistence of acting rational is determined by the perceived burden of the problem. In this work, the inductive way of arriving at decisions plays an important role, and the paper will present a way of describing this process in a consistent way. The process will be denoted as the actual level of behavioral change, and represent the core property of this paper. Applying the presented theory is most appropriate for situations where it could be assumed the burden of a problem, expressed as a prevalence rate, will drive the behavioral change. The line of reasoning in this paper will therefore be applied to the important arena of fighting the spread of HIV.

Sveriges befolkning fortsätter att öka och en majoritet av Sveriges kommuner anger att deupplever en bostadsbrist. För att bemöta behovet av fler bostäder finns därför ett behov avfortsatt exploatering av kommunal mark där kommunernas process för tilldelning av mark tillbyggherrar benämns markanvisning. Fram tills 2015 har detta dock varit oreglerat vilket ocksåhar lett till stora variationer i anvisningsprocessen mellan kommunerna och få studier hargenomförts inom området.Syftet med denna studie är att beskriva markanvisningsprocessen i olika kommuner med fokuspå transparensen i utvärderingen av anbud samt vilken logik som styr detta. Målet är attdiskutera olika tillvägagångssätt inklusive dess förutsägbarhet och transparens med avstamp itidigare studier samt teorier för den rationella beslutsprocessen. Det empiriska materialetsamlades primärt in via intervjuer med respondenter från utvalda kommuner i kombinationmed information från offentliga styrdokument.Studiens resultat bekräftar de variationer mellan kommunerna som tidigare identifierats menger en ny inblick i hur utvärderingsprocesserna genomförs i praktiken. I studien föreslås enalternativ kategorisering av anvisningsmetoder samtidigt som resultaten visar på en generellotydlighet och brist på standardiserade utvärderingsprocesser. Avsaknaden av generellariktlinjer försämrar transparensen mot aktörer på marknaden och en trend att övergå till meriterativa beslutsprocesser minskar även förutsägbarheten. För att förbättra dessa aspekterinom markanvisningsprocessen krävs ytterligare forskning som studerar de kommunalaförutsättningarna, ökad kunskapsspridning och erfarenhetsutbyte tillsammans med endiskussion kring lämpliga metoder för att uppnå den största samhällsekonomiska nyttan. / The population in Sweden continues to increase and a majority of the municipalities state thatthey are experiencing a housing shortage. To meet the need for more housing, there isconsequently a need for continued exploitation of municipal land, where the municipalities'process for allocating land to builders is called land allocation. However, until 2015 this hasbeen unregulated, which has also led to large variations in the allocation process between themunicipalities and few studies have been carried out in the field.The purpose of this study is to describe the land allocation process in different municipalitieswith a focus on transparency in the tender evaluation and the logic that governs this. The aimis to discuss different approaches including its predictability and transparency with regard toprevious studies and theories for the rational decision-making process. The empirical materialwas collected primarily through interviews with respondents from selected municipalities incombination with information from public control documents.The results of the study confirm the variations between the municipalities, which werepreviously identified, but give a new insight into how the evaluation processes are implementedin practice. The study proposes an alternative categorization of allocation methods, while theresults show a general lack of clarity and standardized evaluation processes. The lack of generalguidelines reduces transparency towards market actors and a trend towards more iterativedecision-making processes also reduces predictability. In order to improve these aspects withinthe land allocation process, further research is needed which studies the municipal conditions,increased knowledge dissemination and exchange of experience together with a discussionabout suitable methods for achieving the highest socio-economic benefit.

CHARLES UNIVERSITY IN PRAGUE FACULTY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES Institute of Sociological Studies Pavla Procházková How people buy on internet Abstract of the Diploma Thesis This thesis describes the basic principles of human behavior in shopping on the Internet. The aim was to tell whether shopping on the Internet is rational. The work deals with theories of rationality and bounded rationality theories from the perspective of sociological, economic and psychological approaches. All theories agree that the man is rational, selects the most efficient option of possible behavior. Whether the benefits gained are economic, social or psychological. From this broad perspective, it is clear that people in most cases their actions are rational, because even the deepest emotions have some rational basis, however, that over the centuries They lost its effectiveness. Perhaps it may be irrational today due to too rapid growth of technology, information overload (information is becoming more and more widely available, but their understanding is worse, a man must decide which of them to follow). Internet for shopping feature brings greater rationality in their instruments. It also restricts such perceptions, which reduces the rationality of choice. The conclusion is that people act rationally on the Internet, buying in order to...

Bakgrunden för denna studie är problematiken kring beslutsfattande. Tidigare forskning visar att en individ dagligen fattar en mängd medvetna och omedvetna beslut. Dessa beslut faller sig olika utefter vilka erfarenheter, preferenser och känslor individen har och hur detta påverkar individen vid köp av dyra sällanköpsvaror. Syftet med studien är att identifiera faktorer och personlighetstyper som influerar köparens beslut gällande dyra sällanköpsvaror. / The aim of this study is to identify factors and personality characteristics influencing the buyer's decision regarding expensive durable goods. The findings suggest how to apply knowledge and awareness of the decision process in on-site presentation to improve the efficiency of the selling process from the sellers’ perspective.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-08-17T14:52:46Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Luis Carlos Costa.pdf: 746068 bytes, checksum: f166f2cc1f233fa3ddbeff894e618cf7 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2003-04-14 / This work is part of a major project called ICS (Intelliget Commerce System) that has as it´s main goal to develop an Intelligent Negotiation System for Eletronic Business on the B2B category wich is being developed at UFMA (Maranhão s Federal University) under the Coordination of Prof. Dr. Sofiane Labidi. In this work we will specifically see the basic architecture proposed for the system, the technologies that bases it and in a more detailed way we will see the negotiation between sofware agents beyond its applications in the proposed system. In this context, we intend, to propose and develop a system that can automatize the negotiation mechanisms - purchase and sale of products and services - making the interactions between companies faster, more sophisticated and efficient, and thus increase even more the profits of this business. Being so, we present the ICS (Intelligent Commerce Sysrtem) as an Eletronic Business System based on Mobile Software Agent s technology that follows the OMG MASIF2 of OMG standard(OMG, 2000). Three important features of ICS are emphasized: the eletronic commerce lifecycle, the user modeling and the proposed ontologies on each of the lifecycle´s phase. Thus the ICS aims to get as end item of the negotiation, the best opportunities of purchase and sale of products and services, thus providing, a decision making support system. / Este trabalho faz parte de um projeto maior chamado ICS (Intelliget Commerce System) e que tem como objetivo desenvolver um Ambiente Inteligente de Negociação para Comércio Eletrônico na categoria B2B e que está sendo desenvolvido na UFMA (Universidade Federal do Maranhão) sob a Orientação do Prof. Dr. Sofiane Labidi. Neste trabalho trataremos especificamente da arquitetura básica proposta para o sistema, as tecnologias que o fundamentam e de forma mais detalhada trataremos da negociação entre agentes de software além das suas aplicações no sistema ora proposto. Neste contexto, pretendemos, propor e implementar um sistema que possa automatizar os mecanismos de negociação - compra e venda de produtos e serviços - tornando as interações entre empresas mais sofisticadas, rápidas e eficientes, e assim incrementar ainda mais os lucros deste ramo de negócio. Sendo assim, nós apresentamos o ICS (Intelligent Commerce Sysrtem) como um sistema de Comércio Eletrônico baseado na tecnologia de Agentes Móveis seguindo o padrão MASIF1 da OMG (OMG, 2000). Três importantes características do ICS são enfatizadas: ciclo de vida do comércio eletrônico, modelagem do usuário e as ontologias propostas para cada fase do ciclo de vida. Assim o ICS visa obter como produto final da negociação, as melhores oportunidades de compra e venda de produtos e serviços, provendo assim, um sistema de suporte à tomada de decisão.

Bakgrund och problem  Det har blivit mer vanligt att räkna på de mänskliga resurserna i organisationer, vilket har lett till att HR-avdelningen har fått en mer strategisk roll och tagit avstånd från att bara varit en administrativ stödfunktion. Människor är de som organiserar beslutsfattning och agerar utefter beslutsproblem varav det behövs kompetent personal, regler och struktur. Beslutsprocesserna genomgås ofta med en vision av vad önskat resultat ska bli vilket ofta går i enlighet med organisationens mål. Personalnyckeltal används av alla organisationer i någon mening. Vanligtvis i ett jämförande syfte från tidigare år, till andra konkurrenter eller för att se trender. De bidrar till att föra organisationen framåt mot de uppsatta målen. Det mänskliga kapitalet är svårare att räkna på än andra immateriella tillgångar, men att ändå kunna använda sig av personalnyckeltalen i beslutsprocesser bör därför kunna resultera i en mer tydlig process. Syfte och metod  Syftet med studien var att utöka den teoretiska och praktiska kunskapen om betydelsen personalnyckeltal har i organisationers beslutsprocesser. För att undersöka detta tillämpades därför en kvalitativ metod där fem semistrukturerade intervjuer genomfördes med intervjupersoner från både privat och offentlig sektor.  Resultat och slutsats Studien resulterade i en ökad teoretisk och praktisk kunskap då personalnyckeltal har en betydelse för organisationers beslutsprocesser i de faser där de agerar som underlag. Det är ytterst viktigt att använda sig av siffror som personalnyckeltal när en organisation identifierar ett problem, samlar in information till beslut och sedan utvärderar den process som genomförts och det beslut som implementerats. / Background and problem Accounting for the human resources within organizations have become more common which have led to a more strategic role for the HR-department and a departure from its original role as a supportive administrative part of the organization. Humans are the ones who organize decision making and therefore act along the problems of the decision where competent personnel, rules and structure are needed. The decision-making processes are often undergoing with a vision of what the wanted result is which often is in conjunction with the goal of the organization. All organizations have use of key performance indicators in some capacity. It´s commonly used with a comparative purpose in contrast of previous years, comparing key performance indictors to other competitors or to spot trends. They contribute to bring the organization towards its goals. The human capital is harder to account for than other intangible assets, but to be able to use key performance indicators in decision-making processes should therefore result in a more distinct process.  Purpose and method  The purpose of this study was to expand the theoretical and practical knowledge of the significance that key performance indicators have in organizational decision-making processes. A qualitative method was therefore used where five semi structured interviews were conducted with interviewing persons from both the private and public sector. Results and conclusion  This study resulted in an increased theoretical and practical knowledge in that key performance indicators have a significant matter in organizational decision-making processes in those phases where they act as a groundwork. It is of utmost importance to use digits like key performance indicators when an organization identifies a problem, collects information to be used for the decision and later evaluates the previous process and the decision that has been implemented.