Cooperative Agent Systems: Artificial Agents Play the Ultimatum Game

We explore computational approaches for artificial agents to play the ultimatum game. We compare our agents' behavior with that predicted by classical game theory, as well as behavior found in experimental (or behavioral) economics investigations. In particular, we study the following questions: How do artificial agents perform in playing the ultimatum game against fixed rules, dynamic rules, and rotating rules? How do coevolving artificial agents perform? Will learning software agents do better? What is the value of intelligence? What will happen when smart learning agents play against dumb (no-learning) agents? What will be the impact of agent memory size on performance? This exploratory study provides experimental results pertaining to these questions.     

人工智能经济学的思想端倪及建构路径

人工智能技术的广泛运用正在悄然改变人类物质文明和精神文明。文章认为人工智能对社会经济、政治、文化乃至对意识形态的影响，已经展露出可建构人工智能经济学的思想端倪。基于数字经济的发展，需要解释人工智能会在哪些方面通过市场机制对厂商投资经营发生作用；厂商运用人工智能技术究竟能在多大程度上提供有效供给和预测需求，厂商在未来普遍采用大数据分析和人工智能技术进行投资经营选择时，社会经济实践会在多大范围内要求经济学家修正微观经济学基础的理性选择理论、厂商理论和产业组织理论；假若大数据分析和人工智能技术在未来果真会引发经济学革命，经济学家如何探寻人工智能经济学的建构路径等。文章拟依据微观经济学原理对以上诸问题作出分析性描述，对有可能在理论上站得住脚的人工智能经济学的建构路径展开研究，以期达到相对前卫的理论认知。     

非期望效用理论研究述评

期望效用理论（EUT）出现后,成为主流经济学和管理学中研究不确定性环境下决策活动的理论基础。但近50年特别是最近20多年来,随着行为科学的发展以及实验经济学的崛起且逐步融入主流,与EUT相抵触的经验证据大量涌现,因此其作为不确定性决策活动的理论根基正在被广泛质疑,各学科寻找EUT替代者的努力催生了多种不同的非期望效用理论。本文在对经典期望效用理论批判的基础上,对国外正处于进展中的非期望效用理论文献进行全面回顾和简单评价,以期为国内从事这一领域理论和应用研究的学者提供一些线索和思路。     

Modeling and supporting task-oriented group processes: Purposeful complex adaptive systems and Evolutionary Systems Design

Evolutionary Systems Design (ESD) is a universal general problem solving, formal modeling, design framework for purposeful complex adaptive systems (PCAS) and processes, i.e., task-oriented group processes. These processes constitute policy making, group decision, negotiation, and multiagent problem solving with human and/or artificial agents. ESD is also a framework for computer group support systems (GSS) that support these processes. The ESD general framework can be applied to define and solve specific problems. In this article the ESD framework is presented and illustrated by example. The article provides background for ESD computer implementations discussed in two other related articles (Lewis and Shakun 1996; Bui and Shakun 1996).     

Analysis of multiple criteria decision support systems for cooperative groups

This article reviews research on multiple criteria decision support systems for cooperative groups. The systems included in this survey integrate concepts from group decision theory, multiple criteria decision methodology, and decision support system technology. Three dimensions are considered in the analysis of existing research: the multiple criteria decision technique used to generate decision alternatives or to choose from a given set; the method used to facilitate individual compromise and group consensus; and the application category, if any.     

The rising tide of artificial intelligence and business automation: Developing an ethical framework

Recent advancements in robotics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and sensors now enable machines to automate activities that once seemed safe from disruption—including tasks that rely on higher-level thinking, learning, tacit judgment, emotion sensing, and even disease detection. Despite these advancements, the ethical issues of business automation and artificial intelligence—and who will be affected and how—are less understood. In this article, we clarify and assess the cultural and ethical implications of business automation for stakeholders ranging from laborers to nations. We define business automation and introduce a novel framework that integrates stakeholder theory and social contracts theory. By integrating these theoretical models, our framework identifies the ethical implications of business automation, highlights best practices, offers recommendations, and uncovers areas for future research. Our discussion invites firms, policymakers, and researchers to consider the ethical implications of business automation and artificial intelligence when approaching these burgeoning and potentially disruptive business practices.     

Relational roles and triangle dramas: Effects on power play and sentiments in industrial channels

This study compares behavioral characteristics — power, influence, and satisfaction — in channels with different levels of commitment to long-term, collaborative exchange within the supply network to dealers in the office furniture industry. Supporting exchange theory and Emersonian power theory, power, influence, and satisfaction are positively associated with cooperation between traders. Furthermore, the data support expectations for how interaction processes in one dealer-supplier exchange are affected by the character of the dealer's linkages to another supplier in the network.The authors contributed equally to this research and are listed alphabetically. They thank Robert Dahlstrom, Sejo Oh, Fritz Russ, and Ann Welsh for comments on previous drafts of this article.     

以色列人工智能发展现状分析及政策举措

目前,世界上许多国家都在竞相发展人工智能,以创新创业见长的以色列在人工智能方面也作出了重要部署,并有突出的表现。本文基于以色列创新署发布的《2019年创新报告》等报告及数据,着重分析了以色列近年来在人工智能方面取得的成就和当前发展所面临的障碍,以及以色列为保持现有优势并进一步推动人工智能发展的政策举措,旨在为我国人工智能的发展提供参考借鉴。     

Transaction Cost and Institutional Drivers of Supplier Adoption of Environmental Practices

Research concerning a supplier’s voluntary adoption of environmental practices has focused on buyer influence and supplier leadership values. These explanations are pertinent to early adopters, but other theoretical perspectives are needed to understand why later adopters, who tend to be more conservative, may or may not be likely to adopt environmental practices. Two theoretical lenses may be used to better understand later adoption processes. First, transaction cost economics examines implementation costs that have not been considered in previous research. A transaction cost economics perspective suggests that suppliers are more likely to adopt environmental practices if their information seeking, bargaining, and enforcement costs are minimized. Second, institutional theory can be applied to drivers within the supply base. The institutional theory analysis reveals that supplier adoption of environmental practices is more likely if coercive, normative, and mimetic institutional forces are in play.     

Defining a right problem in group decision and negotiation: Feeling and evolutionary generating procedures

It is not unusual that decision makers define and solve a wrong problem. Here we develop an operational procedure for defining a right or correct problem. A problem may be represented as—a problem representation defining a problem consists of—two evolving hierarchies of relations, as discussed in the article. Rightness in a problem representation requires rightness in these relations which are beliefs held by a decision maker. Operational definition and validation of rightness in these relations, that is, retaining them as correct, is by feeling and by specified evolutionary generating procedures for examining, changing (evolving), and retaining these relations. Based on rightness in these relations, we discuss right group problem definition and solution in the general case where information is not fully shared (nonshared) among individuals in the group. Thus, our work contributes to procedural rationality—how decisions should be or are made—in individual and group decision-making and associated group decision and negotiation support systems (GDNSS).     

行为经济学对经济人假设的重新审视

经济人假设是经济学理论重要的假设之一,以此为基础构建起从古典经济学到新古典经济学的理论体系。但其与现实的脱离,导致了经济学理论对现实经济解释力的下降。行为经济学将心理学分析法与经济学研究结合起来,依赖有关人的判断和决策的分析来了解经济主体行为,对经济人假设提出了挑战,并对其加以完善。其重要意义在于提高了经济学对现实的解释力、给予经济行为主体实际决策过程以良好的描述,同时为管理学、会计学、市场营销、金融学等与经济学相关的领域提供了新的研究途径。     

Big Data and Information Processing in Organizational Decision Processes

Data-centric approaches such as big data and related approaches from business intelligence and analytics (BI&A) have recently attracted major attention due to their promises of huge improvements in organizational performance based on new business insights and improved decision making. Incorporating data-centric approaches into organizational decision processes is challenging, even more so with big data, and it is not self-evident that the expected benefits will be realized. Previous studies have identified the lack of a research focus on the context of decision processes in data-centric approaches. By using a multiple case study approach, the paper investigates different types of BI&A-supported decision processes, and makes three major contributions. First, it shows how different facets of big data and information processing mechanism compositions are utilized in different types of BI&A-supported decision processes. Second, the paper contributes to information processing theory by providing new insights about organizational information processing mechanisms and their complementary relationship to data-centric mechanisms. Third, it demonstrates how information processing theory can be applied to assess the dynamics of mechanism composition across different types of decisions. Finally, the study’s implications for theory and practice are discussed.     

Unethical and Fraudulent Financial Reporting: Applying the Theory of Planned Behavior

This research applies the theory of planned behavior to corporate managers’ decision making as it relates to fraudulent financial reporting. Specifically, we conducted two studies to examine the effects of attitude, subjective norm and perceived control on managers’ decisions to violate generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) in order to meet an earnings target and receive an annual bonus. The results suggest that the theory of planned behavior predicts whether managers’ decisions are ethical or unethical. These findings are relevant to corporate leaders who seek to improve ethical work climates of organizations and to many regulators, accountants, corporate governance officials and investors.     

区域创新系统构建的理论基础

区域创新系统是一个客观存在的研究对象,其构建获得了系统论、国家创新系统理论、区域经济学、创新经济学、新制度经济学、都市圈理论、科技合作与技术转移理论等学科和理论从系统到区域到创新的全面的思想支持和逻辑支撑．     

Blockchain adoption: A value driver perspective

The ongoing discussion regarding blockchain technologies is focused primarily on cryptocurrencies, but blockchain features and functionalities have developed beyond financial instruments. As the technologies provide new functionalities, the associated value proposition changes as well. This study explores the relationship between blockchain technologies and their underlying value drivers. Four identified distinct blockchain stages of increased maturity are analyzed and discussed. This covers the evolutionary technology types focused on transactions, smart contracts, decentralized applications, and the introduction of artificial intelligence supporting decentralized decision making. In addition, we address management issues around appropriate blockchain adoption using a blockchain value driver-focused framework that gives decision makers actionable questions and recommendations. We provide practitioners with a method for assessing suitable blockchain adoption that addresses the specific value creation associated with a given organizational strategy. For academics, we critically identify and assess the characteristics of the blockchain stages and their strategy implications and provide a structured approach conceptualizing blockchain technology evolution.     

Advances in Drama Theory for Managing Global Hazards and Disasters. Part I: Theoretical Foundation

Global risk and disaster management challenges are complex and ill-structured group decision processes characterized by time-sensitive, multi-faceted, and self-organizing negotiations, high decision stakes, extreme uncertainty, and dynamic, value-laden tradeoffs. Drama theory asserts that conflict resolution requires players to engage in a rational-emotional process of re-defining both the game and their “positions” in it until agreement on a satisfactory resolution is reached. While game theory has been widely applied to problems dealing with hazards, risk, and disasters, it assumes fixed players, options, and preferences, and hence does not allow for the re-definition of the conflict under consideration. Results show that drama theory constitutes a flexible and powerful tool for modeling group decision and negotiation processes involving natural, man-made, and health-related hazards, risk, and catastrophes in the post-911 security environment by modeling emotional responses that, throughout the course of a game, can lead to unanticipated reactions and change basic assumptions. This is achieved through the use of option boards to construct and analyze emergency, disaster, or crisis models that are structurally similar to game models. Finally, drama theory is compared and contrasted to conflict analysis, which developed from common roots in metagame analysis. The strengths and weaknesses of drama theory are critically evaluated in the context of global climate change and the mounting risk of a worldwide influenza pandemic.     

Cultural Dimensions and Prototypical Criteria for Multi-Criteria Decision Support in Electronic Markets: A Comparative Analysis of Two Job Markets

Electronic markets are virtual meeting places where buyers and sellers interact to trade products or services. The main motivation for both buyers and sellers to participate in an electronic market is the desire to maximize their private utility (Bakos 1998). Electronic markets therefore usually provide some form of communication, decision or negotiation aid for buyers and sellers to support their utility maximizing goals. This paper presents a comparative analysis of two electronic job market case studies conducted at a university in Europe (Brussels, Belgium) and in the United States (Newark, New Jersey). At the occasion of the universities’ career fairs, students (n = 392) and local companies (n = 57) were invited to participate in an electronic job market to identify the best job offers (n = 137) and students, respectively. Participants were able to create personalized software agents to aid their search and decision making activities in the market. Every software agent was embedded with a multi-criteria decision support tool to produce a rank ordered list of students or job offers. Preference data gathered from market participants’ use of the multi-criteria decision model allow us to construct relational preference structures using a technique based on the mathematical theory of fuzzy relations (Bandler and Kohout 1980). These preference structures express relationships among the criteria that students and companies have used to identify job offers and companies, respectively. The purpose of the paper is to present the communicative and cultural implications of these relational preference structures. The theories of Hofstede (1983), Hall (1977) and Trompenaars (1993) on cultural dimensions allow us to discuss cultural differences on the choice of prototypical criteria. The paper concludes with implications for the use of electronic markets in the staffing industry and the role of software agents in such job markets.     

The effects of professional education on values and the resolution of ethical dilemmas: Business school vs. law school students

Prior research on the impact of ethics education within the business curriculum has yielded mixed results. Although the impact is often found to be positive, it appears to be both small and short-lived. Interpretation of these results, however, is subject to important methodological limitations. The present research employed a longitudinal methodology to evaluate the impact of an M.B.A. program versus a law program on the values and ethical decision making behavior of a cohort of students at two major universities in the northeast. The results suggest that the M.B.A. curriculum remains a value-neutral experience for most students. In contrast, the law school program had a significant impact on both values and ethical decision making.Donald L. McCabe is Associate Professor of Management at the Graduate School of Management, Rutgers — The State University of New Jersey. His research focuses on ethical decision making, interpretive processes under conditions of uncertainty, and issues of student values and ethics.Janet M. Dukerich is an Associate Professor of Management at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research focuses on individual and group decision making and interpretation processes in organizations.Jane E. Dutton is Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management at the University of Michigan. Her research interests center on organizational adaptation processes, and in particular, organizational responses to value-laden issues.