Decision Making

Mind Tools Newsletter presents 3 ways of decision making processes:

Multivoting

The democratic system of majority wins is usually a fair way to make a decision. So long as voters have sufficient information on which to make a choice, the system usually works well, just as long as there are only a few options from which to choose.But what happens when the choices expand and each vote is then dispersed over a wider range? A winner emerges but there are many more people who didnt vote for the winning option than people who did.


When there are many choices, simple majority rule voting is often not the best method for reaching decisions, if you want everyone to feel that they own the decision. Yet with idea sharing and brainstorming activities frequently taking place in workplaces today, voting is needed more and more. This is particularly the case where the decision is subjective, where different strong views are held, where many members of the group have power, or where strong commitment to the outcome is needed.

When group consensus is needed, multivoting is a simple process that helps you whittle down a large list of options to a manageable number. It works by using several rounds of voting, in which the list of alternatives becomes shorter and shorter. If you start with 10 alternatives, the top five may move to the second round of voting, and so on.

In addition, in all but the last round, each person has more than one vote, allowing them to indicate the strength of their support for each option. Everyone votes in each cycle, so more people are involved in approving the final outcome than if only one vote was held.

Multivoting helps group members narrow down a wide field of options so that the group decision is focused on the most popular alternatives. This makes reaching consensus possible, and gives an outcome that people can buy into.

Delphi Method
It’s a common observation to say that when you get three experts together, you’ll often end up with four different opinions. This is particularly the case in areas (such as resource allocation and forecasting) where the conclusion reached depends on a number of subjective assessments. Arguments can quickly become passionate, and disagreement can often become intensely personal and bitter.



More than this, in face-to-face discussion, situations of “groupthink” can occur. Here (for example) the eccentric views of early or charismatic speakers can achieve undue prominence as the group seeks to find consensus. This can lead to poor decision making.

Leadership
Excellence!

Learn how to master the stresses that come with a successful, high-powered career...

With Mind Tools' "How to Lead: Discover the Leader Within You", learn the 48 essential skills needed to be a highly effective and well-respected leader.

This is where a technique like the Delphi Method is needed to reach a properly thought-through consensus among experts.

The Delphi Method is a structured approach to problem analysis which makes sure that problems and proposed solutions are thoroughly explored and examined.

By using a remote and anonymous approach, it avoids the problems of groupthink and personality conflict that can lead to poor group decision making. More than this, it allows the time for detailed analysis and careful criticism that so often is not possible within a group analysis and decision making process.

The process works through a number of cycles of anonymous written discussion and argument, managed by a facilitator. The facilitator controls the process, and manages the flow and consolidation of information.

Nominal Group Technique
When a group meets, it’s often the case that people who shouts loudest, or those with higher status in the organization, get their ideas heard more than others. So when it comes to gaining consensus on important decisions or priorities, how do you make sure you get true consensus and a fair decision for the group?

One technique to help with this is the Nominal Group Technique, a face-to-face group process technique for gaining consensus. A typical application is in organizational planning when a group needs to agree priorities in order to assign resources and funds.

The benefit of the technique is that the group shares and discusses all issues before evaluation, with each group member participating equally in evaluation. The evaluation works with each participant “nominating” his or her priority issues, and then ranking them on a scale of, say, 1 to 10.

See http://www.mindtools.com/pages/main/newMN_TED.htm for details

Strategic intuition - Decision making

Professor William Duggan from Columbia Business School presents a very interesting idea that builds on recent research on expert intuition which supports the notion that in urgent situations, people make decisions by combining analysis of past experience with a flash of insight. For example, in the 1990s psychologist Gary Klein studied the decision-making processes of emergency room nurses, firefighters and soldiers in battle. While these experts initially attributed their choices to intuition, further probing revealed that they were actually making rapid connections between the situation at hand and similar situations stored in their memories.

He also states that recent brain research provides further evidence that people make decisions through a combination of analysis and intuition. In 2000 a group of neuroscientists won the Nobel Prize for a new model of the brain called intelligent memory, which overturned the previous left-brain/right-brain model. “Basically as you go through life, you’re putting things on the shelves of your brain,” says Duggan. “The scientists call it parsing; it’s technically analysis. Your brain is constantly comparing what it’s taking in to what’s already there, and when it finds a combination — a synthesis — you have an insight.” These ideas are build on the four elements of Napoleon’s approach to strategy: (1) examples from history, (2) presence of mind, (3) a coup d’oeil or flash of insight, and (4) the resolution to move forward and overcome all obstacles.(see Strategic intuition: The key to innovation for details - checked 29 October 2006)

Object-Field by Watanabe & Nishio

This is a very interesting article (The object-field model for managing a group activity) by Watanabe and Nishio.
Abstract
The object-oriented model is very applicable to represent various phenomena in the real world from an entity-interaction point of view. The successful modeling methods have been developed on many current topics. However, it is not sufficient to model a group of interrelated objects and dynamic actions of individual objects effectively under this paradigm. We introduce the concept of field in addition to the notion of object with respect to constructing the cooperative environment for objects, and then discuss our modeling method based on the object and field. Our modeling method is successful to construct a group of objects through the field, and to organize a hierarchical structure among objects by looking upon the field as an abstract object conceptually. Also, we explain a property adaptation mechanism of objects in fields with respect to the group activity of objects. (Access the article )

Poster at GIScience 2006

This is the poster I presented at GIScience 2006. The poster forms part of a proposal to consider how the Object-Field model, a model that is considered to combine both the discrete-object and continuous-field views, has some unique qualities for collaborative decision making. It aims to prompt conceptual and theoretical thoughts and discussions by identifying when to use the Object-Field model and not the conventional object and field models . The insights and comments addressed the following kinds of questions :

1) Is the integration of knowledge and observational data useful & usable ?

2) Is the integration of Object & Field views brings new analytical advantages?

3) Is the Object-Field model an improved sharing of collaborative analysis means?
An answer?
The Object-Field model enables visualization and representation of objects in a field. This approach (visualization of field objects) could work better than the conventional approaches in a collaborative environment by presenting the users with multimedia objects, objects that record information in text, image or other forms, related to specific locations or a set of locations in a field. An object in this context is a modeller’s conceptualization/knowledge. Thus, the users are not presented with just observational data but this data is augmented by visualized users' conceptualizations/knowledge of geographic domains, and their understanding using embedded metadata expressed as semantic and uncertainty objects. These embedded semantics and uncertainties propose a new dimension in the metadata discussion. This is the explicit recording of collaborative understanding, interpretation and criticism.

In the Object-Field model, the four types of relationships between locations and objects enables the conventional one location-one object and many locations-one object relationship but it also enables the one locations-many objects and many locations-many objects. This mathematically-based relations between objects and locations enables the user to rearrange the objects in a way that supports comparisons. It also enables a object-based approach when operations are applied. Thus different conceptualizations and interpretations between collaborators can be easily visualized and cross-checked by reapplying them to new purposes or procedures

Integrating observational data and derived knowledge (expressed as metadata objects in the Object-Field model) enable us to improve sharing of analysis by designing a user interface that uses the same set of tools for the exploration of data and knowledge. This integration is important in cross-cultural collaborative environments as it manages semantic inaccuracies and making metadata not only useful but also usable.

Definitions of Object-Field, Field and Object

The Object-Field view of the world is considered to combine of both the discrete-object and continuous-field representations. The Object-Field model attempts to integrate the field and the object view in a single, combined and integrated data model. This is achieved by mapping locations in a field to objects. Aggregating field locations forms the objects. ). This model uses a single elementary spatial unit (hereafter object element) to exploit the benefits of continuous-field and discrete-object views. The object elements are associated with a field value and a variable number of object references. See an Object-Field example by Cova & Goodchild (checked 14 October 2006).

the discrete-object view of the world is considered as a series of entities located in space. An object is a digital representation of these entities. Objects are classified into different object types such as point objects (stores), line objects(retail network) and area objects (London Boroughs). These Objects are defined by their boundaries. In turn, we attach/associate one or more attributes with these objects to specify what is located at these places. These general classes are instantiated by specific objects and, we can attach behaviours to these objects

The continuous-field view of the world is made up of properties varying continuously across space. The key factors of the field view are spatial continuity and self-definition. As the key characteristics of the field view is spatial continuity and self-definition we are not forced to identify objects and their boundaries. In other words, the field is a collection of a certain kind of measurements (such as consumer’s spending behaviour) that are used to define a value everywhere in the field and it is the values themselves that define that field.

My publications about the Object-Field Model, collaborative Visualization and Decision Making

Voudouris, V., P. F. Fisher and J. Wood (2006) 'When and Why Object-Fields and not just Objects or just Fields?'. Presented at the Fourth International Conference on GI Science 2006 (Germany), Ifgi-Prints Series.

Voudouris, V., P.F. Fisher and J. Wood (2006) 'Capturing Conceptualization Uncertainty Interactively using Object-Fields' in W. Kainz, A. Reid and G. Elmes (eds) 12th International Symposium on Spatial Data Handling. Springer-Verlag.

Voudouris, V. P.F. Fisher and J. Wood (2006) 'Collaborative Visualization: Metadata within Object-Fields as Communication Means'. Presented at the RGS-IBG Annual International Conference 2006, London, UK.

Voudouris, V. and S. Marsh (2006) 'Geovisualization and GIS: A Human Centred Approach'. In Visual Languages for Interactive Computing: Definitions and Formalizations (Eds, F.Ferri), Idea Group Inc.

Voudouris, V., J. Wood and P.F. Fisher (2005) 'Collaborative geoVisualization: Object-Field Representations with Semantic and Uncertainty Information' in: Meersman, R., Tari, Z., Herrero, P., et al (Eds) On the Move to Meaningful Internet Systems OTM 2005, Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS), Vol 3762, Springer, Berlin

Welcome

The purpose of this blog is to promote discussions about the Object-Field model, applied statistics and mathematics, decision making, visualization, object-oriented modeling and knowledge representation.

From time to time, I will post my personal opinion about these issues based on my research and work experience.

Please post interesting ideas, links and articles about the data and knowledge modelling, applied statistics and mathematics, theory of decision making, visualization and object-oriented modeling.