Experimental Studies Of Interactive Decisions

This book is about the interplay of theory and experimentation on group decision making in economics. The theories that the book subjects to experimental testing mostly come from the theory of games. The decisions investigated in the book mostly concern economic interaction like strict competition. two-person bargaining. and coalition formation. The underlying philosophy of the articles collected in this book is consistent with the opinion of a growing number of economists and psychologists that economic issues cannot be understood fully just by thinking about them. Rather. the interplay between theory and experimentation is critical for the development of economics as an observational science (Smith. 1989). Reports of laboratory experiments in decision making and economics date back more than thirty years (e.g .• Allais. 1953; Davidson. Suppes. and Siegel. 1957; Flood. 1958; Friedman. 1%3; Kalisch. Milnor. Nash. and Nering. 1954; Lieberman. 1%0; Mosteller and Nogee. 1951; Rapoport. Chammah. Dwyer. and Gyr. I %2; Siegel and Fouraker. I %0; Stone. 1958). However. only in the last ten or fifteen years has laboratory experimentation in economics started its steady transformation from an occasional curiosity into a regular means for investigating various economic phenomena and examining the role of economic institutions. Groups of researchers in the USA and abroad have used experimental methods with increasing sophistication to attack economic problems that arise in individual decision making under risk. two-person bargaining.

Computer simulation-based education and training is a multi-billion dollar industry. With the increased complexity of organizational decision making, projected demand for computer simulation-based decisional aids is on the rise. The objective of this book is to enhance systematically our understanding of and gain insights into the general process by which human facilitated ILEs are effectively designed and used in improving users’ decision making in dynamic tasks. This book is divided into four major parts. Part I serves as an introduction to the subject of “decision making in dynamic tasks”, its importance and its complexity. Part II provides background material, drawing upon the relevant literature, for the development of an integrated process model on the effectiveness of human facilitated ILEs in improving decision making in dynamic tasks. Part III focuses on the design, development and application of Fish Bank ILE, in laboratory experiments, to gather empirical evidence for the validity of the process model. Finally, part IV presents a comprehensive analysis of the gathered data to provide a powerful basis for understating important phenomena of training with human facilitated simulation-based learning environments, thereby, help to drive critical lessons to be learned. This book provides the reader with both a comprehensive understanding of the phenomena encountered in decision making with human facilitated ILEs and a unique way of studying the effects of these phenomena on people’s ability to make better decision in complex, dynamic tasks. This book is intended to be of use to managers and practitioners, researchers and students of dynamic decision making. The background material of Part II provides a solid base to understand and organize the existing experimental research literature and approaches.

This book collects and integrates the results of an extensive research program conducted by the authors over the past two decades. It spans the disciplines of transportation science, operations management, and behavioral economics, and consists of 16 chapters previously published in peer-reviewed academic journals and grouped under three topical sections: queueing, route choice, and departure time. The book focuses on strategic interactions in directed networks and laboratory experiments carefully designed to test the descriptive validity of the underlying theoretical models. The research question that unifies the chapters is: do the conclusions of theoretical literature account for the decisions of network users in controlled laboratory experiments? With several major qualifications, this book answers this question affirmatively.

An elegantly simple approach to making better decisions in organizations

This book gives recommendations on which interactive decision aids to offer in webstores. Interactive decision aids are tools that help online shoppers to compare and evaluate product information. Consumers can, for instance, exclude products that do not meet certain criteria, they can highlight certain information or they can assign ratings of different kinds. Interactive decision aids are important, because finding the preferred product in a short amount of time increases both the customers’ satisfaction and, in turn, the sales volume.This book includes a detailed description of decision aids, closely studies how decision aids are related to the decision behavior of customers, and develops a comprehensive system of decision aids, which is very flexible, increases both customer satisfaction and confidence, and can be used intuitively. The close link between typical behaviors and the decision aids allows webstores to learn about customers’ decision-making behavior by using a simple click stream analysis. The book is written in an easy-to-read style and provides both practical recommendations and knowledge about consumer behavior

In recent years, there has been increasing implementation of group and team decision-making within organizations, much of it managed electronically, between members of what are "virtual" groups or teams. Recent research into effective team implementation emphasizes "trust" as an intermediary process, and trust must be a part of any account of team decision-making. This book provides an integrated framework that represents process in decision-making by interactive groups and teams. This framework furthers both our understanding of process and our capabilities in implementation, based on an account of group decision-making that differentiates the information types contributing to decision quality and relates them to process in interactive groups and teams. Author Steve Silver emphasizes the social structure that is inherent in the interaction of decision-makers as group or team members and effects on the information they exchange.

Decision-making has evolved recently thanks to the introduction of information and communication technologies in many organizations, which has led to new kinds of decision-making processes, called “collaborative decision-making”, at the organizational and cognitive levels. This book looks at the development of the decision-making process in organizations. Decision-aiding and its paradigm of problem solving are defined, showing how decision-makers now need to work in a cooperative way. Definitions of cooperation and associated concepts such as collaboration and coordination are given and a framework of cooperative decision support systems is presented, including intelligent DSS, cooperative knowledge-based systems, workflow, group support systems, collaborative engineering, integrating with a collaborative decision-making model in part or being part of global projects. Several models and experimental studies are also included showing that these new processes have to be supported by new types of tools, several of which are described in order to calculate or simulate solutions or global solutions for decision-making modification. Definitions and new trends for these models are given, along with types of systems. Contents 1. Alteration of Decision-Making Processes in Organizations. 2. New Decision-Making Processes. 3. The Need to Cooperate. 4. Cooperative Decision-Making. 5. Activity Support Systems. 6. Cooperative Decision Support Systems: CDSSS. About the Authors Pascale Zaraté is Professor at Toulouse 1 Capitole University, France. She conducts her research at the IRIT Laboratory and is the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Decision Support Systems Technologies. She is co-chair of the European Working Group on DSS and has published several studies and books.