The value of being precise

This study investigates how individuals assess imprecise information. We focus on two essential dimensions of decision under uncertainty, outcomes and probabilities, and their respective precision. We believe the precision of information is highly relevant in the investment setting, as reflected in the well-known “home (familiarity) bias”, and the outcome and probability dimensions, separately or jointly, may affect investors’ knowledge of uncertainty and perceived risk of the investment options, and subsequently affect investors’ choices. To test this conjecture, we conducted three experiments. Our results show that 1) participants demonstrate a pattern of preference for precision and aversion of extreme vagueness and associate vagueness with higher perceived risk and lower investment (experiments one and two); 2) participants prefer vague outcome information to vague probability information (experiment two); 3) familiarity indeed positively affects the precision of estimated values, but this association is stronger for the outcome dimension than for probabilities (experiment three). Our results confirm that precision in information, especially in the outcome dimension has an impact on investors’ resource allocation choices.     

Politics in evaluation: Politically responsive evaluation in high stakes environments

The role of politics has often been discussed in evaluation theory and practice. The political influence of the situation can have major effects on the evaluation design, approach and methods. Politics also has the potential to influence the decisions made from the evaluation findings. The current study focuses on the influence of the political context on stakeholder decision making. Utilizing a simulation scenario, this study compares stakeholder decision making in high and low stakes evaluation contexts. Findings suggest that high stakes political environments are more likely than low stakes environments to lead to reduced reliance on technically appropriate measures and increased dependence on measures better reflect the broader political environment.     

“I feel and think,therefore I am”: An Affect-Cognitive Theory of management decisions

I propose an Affect-Cognitive Theory to comprehensively understand how decisions occur in organizations. To this aim, I first review the assumptions of sensemaking and decision-making streams of research, especially the influence of bounded rationality, affective states and their relationships with cognition; then, I integrate them on the common basis of socially situated cognition. This new theory emphasizes the role of affective states in determining/being determined by cognition and its errors, pointing out decision makers’ affect as the result of multi-level adaptations to the physical and social environment. Management decisions are path dependent but not immutable; they, indeed, bank on the predominant feeling resulting from the modifying interactions and regulations of decision makers with their physical and social environment. Here, decision makers are proposed as “emotional cognizers” overcoming the thinking-feeling dichotomy that has often featured in the study of management decisions. This theory is beneficial for behavioral strategy, offering the needed assumptions to intertwine human cognition, emotions, and social behavior.     

如何当好项目经理

项目经理是项目管理的核心 ,项目经理的素质、知识和管理水平 ,是工程建设项目的实施管理的关键 ,责权利的协调一致则是项目经理负责制的根本保证     

改进灰色预测在油田多目标规划决策中的应用

建立了S油田勘探、开发、炼化、机械、公用工程等多个部门和全局的非线性多级目标优化规划模型,应用关联分析、改进灰色预测、回归分析求取规划模型的约束方程并线性化;编制了相应的计算软件,使之快速预测和优化油田各部门“九五”各年的投资和产值;并将优化结果与油田过去或计划值加以对比,给油田规划决策带来一定的参考。     

Decision analysis for practical negotiation application

The family of decision analysis techniques can be applied effectively to support practical negotiators in international settings. These techniques are most appropriate in support of the prenegotiation phase, when parties are diagnosing the situation, assessing their own plans and strategies, and evaluating likely reactions and outcomes. The paper identifies how these approaches have and can be used to assist negotiation practitioners, offers a rationale for the application of decision analytic approaches in terms of the particular analytical requirements of the prenegotiation period, suggests how these process-oriented tools can be integrated with substantive tools, and discusses ways in which these tools can be presented and delivered to practitioners in a practical and confidence-building manner.     

The econometrics of female labor supply and children

This is a survey of applied econometric research on the effects of children on female labor supply. Reasons for interest in the topic, and a basic model and terminology, are reviewed. Concerns are raised about the possible endogeneity of child status variables, and about the instrumental variables approach for dealing with this problem. Alternative ways of conceptualizing and estimating child status effects are considered, together with selected empirical evidence. Relevant developments from the household demand literature are summarized. Basic issues of model choice are also discussed.     

Quality strategies in supply chain alliances of disposable items

This paper studies a single-product distribution channel where a supplier manufactures items of a given type, some of which are defective, that are sold by a retailer who only detects a subset of the defective items, passing the rest along to customers. We conjecture the structure of the demand and cost functions, assuming customers to have a decreasing marginal aversion to bad quality while both the supplier and the retailer make marginally increasing efforts to avoid bad quality. This allows us to deduce several implicit parameters of a cost model based on observable data, such as the share of the channel margin. Once the parameters of the model are available, we analyze the result of vertical integration. Although we confirm the well-known fact that vertical integration improves the quality perceived by the customer, we characterize the supplier's decision of whether or not to provide a better quality in terms of the individual channel margins. As an alternative, we derive the conditions under which the supplier and the retailer may devise a mutually beneficial transfer contract that simultaneously increases their profit and improves quality.     

交际策略的教学与运用

语言交际教学法的目的是提高学习者的交际能力。然而 ,作为交际能力的一个重要组成部分———策略能力 ,却被教师们忽略。交际策略的可教性依然是个有争议的问题。本文首先陈述交际策略的重要性 ,以便唤起教师的注意力 ;其次 ,分析影响学习者交际策略使用的因素 ;第三部分提出了交际策略的教学方法     

Any complete preference structure without circuit admits an interval representation

This article proves that all complete preference structures where the strict preference relation (P) has no circuit admit a representation by intervals of the real line; the rule for deciding whether an interval is indifferent or preferred to another is less straightforward than for interval orders: strict preference is indeed compatible with a certain degree of overlapping of intervals, the allowed degree being specified by means of a so-called tolerance function.