Developing a Group Decision Support System for Advertising Media Evaluation: A Case in the Middle East

The importance of advertising media evaluation as a multifaceted problem is well known by both academics and practitioners. Although previous studies tried to optimize media evaluation, there still are some gaps and problems to address, particularly in areas of flexibility of models/frameworks, decision making quality, tension management, and agility of the evaluation process. Most of previous studies are based on inflexible models/frameworks that have limitations on number of criteria/alternatives they can consider and type of data they can process. A great volume of the work used arbitrary decision making; arbitrary decision making regarding criteria and media importance may reduce effectiveness of advertising campaigns. Furthermore, the academic literature offers little guidance on group decision aggregation, and tension management during decision making is neglected. Media evaluation is a time taking process and any acceleration will reduce pre-campaign costs. The main aim of this paper is to illustrate how a group decision support system (GDSS) can assist media planners to overcome mentioned problems more systematically. For this purpose, we developed a GDSS that is an integration of three well-known multi-criteria decision making techniques. With a real world case study, we illustrate the performance of the proposed GDSS. Results of our quantitative assessments indicate that the GDSS is flexible, allows decision makers to express their opinions, reduces tension among decision makers, and saves time.     

Decision Making and Business Ethics: The Implications of Using Image Theory in Preference to Rational Choice

The study of decision making has multiple implications for business ethics. This paper outlines some commonly used frameworks for understanding choice in business. It characterises the dominant model for business decision making as rational choice theory (RCT) and contrasts this with a more recent, naturalistic theory of decision-making, image theory. The implications of using RCT and image theory to model decision making are discussed with reference to three ethical systems. RCT is shown to be consistent with Utilitarian ethics, but not with Kantian or Virtue-based ethics. Image theory is shown to be consistent with each. The paper identifies a number of implications following from this analysis.     

A Sorting Model for Group Decision Making: A Case Study of Water Losses in Brazil

Many water supply systems in Brazil have serious problems related to the high index of water losses, which provokes financial and environmental impacts. This is an immediate consequence of an inadequate maintenance plan, allied to natural and budgetary constraints. In addition, in these types of problems it is commonplace to consider the opinions of many managers, such as those from the operational, environmental and financial sectors of Water Companies. In view of this, a sorting multicriteria model to support group decision making is developed. We proposed an approach which sorts the areas of the system which are located in critical zones of water losses into categories, and which takes into account different points of view and considers uncertainty in criteria weights by using only ordinal information, so as to make it viable to manage the maintenance plan and to use the scant financial resources more efficiently. The SMAA-TRI method is used to tackle the group sorting problematic by categorizing the network into zones where losses are intense and thus to focus the managers’ effort on the most critical regions. A case study in Brazil is presented to demonstrate the efficiency of the approach proposed.     

A Web of Watchdogs: Stakeholder Media Networks and Agenda-Setting in Response to Corporate Initiatives

This article seeks to model the agenda-setting strategies of stakeholders equipped with online and other media in three cases involving protests against multinational corporations (MNCs). Our theoretical objective is to widen agenda-setting theory to a dynamic and nonlinear networked stakeholder context, in which stakeholder-controlled media assume part of the role previously ascribed to mainstream media (MSM). We suggest system dynamics (SD) methodology as a tool to analyse complex stakeholder interactions and the effects of their agendas on other stakeholders. We find that largely similar dynamics of interactions occur among stakeholders in these cases, and that the costs for managements of maintaining their agendas steadily rises. We conclude that the “web of watchdogs” comprises a powerful reason for managers to engage in responsibility negotiations with their stakeholders.     

公共服务资源配置中的个人偏好与社会正义——基于实证社会选择方法的问卷实验

以异质化公共服务领域的资源配置为背景,我们引入不同的假想式情境来考察受试者的集体选择的变化.从而,我们使用实证社会选择方法分析了传统上只能利用思想实验讨论的内容.我们发现:在贫富身份确定的“基准”情境下,无论是高禀赋者还是低禀赋者都倾向选择有利于自己的方案;在“无知之幕”和“中立观察者”的情境下,多数受试者会选择较为温和的再分配方案;受试者的选择会受到“效率”因素的影响,“应得”因素的效果则不明显;任一情境下观察到的实际选择都与理论预期不完全相符;某些个体特征因素会对受试者的选择产生影响.通过我们的实验可以得出的重要政策启示是:人们在做出选择时会努力平衡正义原则和效率标准,此为推动基本公共服务均等化的关键约束.     

Testing for Expense Preference Behaviour in UK Building Societies: the Implications for Measures of Scale and Scope Economies

It is well established that utility maximising managers who are not owners of the firm may engage in expense preference behaviour. This article provides the first test for expense preference behaviour in UK building societies. A translog cost function is specified and a direct test for expense preference is conducted which avoids the restrictive assumptions of the intercept test which has been used to test for expense preference behaviour in a number of previous articles. The specification of a translog cost function also permits the estimation of scale and scope economies in UK building societies and this paper compares the estimates obtained when expense preference behaviour is present with previous estimates obtained under the assumption of cost minimising behaviour.     

Decisional Power in Group Decision Making: A Note on the Allocation of Group Members' Weights in the Multiplicative AHP and SMART

Many complex decisions are made in a group environment, where the decision is made jointly by a committee or group structure. The individual group members are often not equally qualified to contribute equitably to the decision process, or may have different saliences (desires) to influence the decision. A quantitative knowledge of the players' decisional power is useful for better understanding of the group decision process, and could even be used in weighted voting within the group structure. We adapt the REMBRANDT suite of decision models (multiplicative AHP and SMART) to measure decisional power in groups, and we generalise this to cater for the case where power itself is deemed to be multidimensional in nature, and the case of uncertain subjective judgements of power amongst group members.     

Group actions and the law: A case study of Social Action Litigation and consumer protection in India

Social Action Litigation (SAL)¹ as an instrument for securing socioeconomic justice for the underprivileged has been one of the outstanding developments in the contemporary Indian legal world. Though the origin is American,² since its inception in the late 1970s SAL has undergone significant developments and has now acquired legitimacy in India. It has certainly revolutionised modern Indian public law and has more recently played an important role in environmental⁴ and consumer protection. The object of the present paper is to discuss the role of Social Action Litigation and to highlight new developments in the context of the newly emerging consumer protection jurisprudence in India.

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Verbandsklagen und Rechtsdurchsetzung: eine Fallstudie zu Klagen im öffentlichen Interesse und Verbraucherschutz in Indien

Zusammenfassung Klagen im öffentlichen Interesse als ein Instrument zur Sicherung sozioökonomischer Gerechtigkeit für interprivilegierte Bevölkerungsschichten sind eine der herausragenden Entwicklungen im zeitgenössischen Recht. Ursprünglich in Amerika entwickelt, sind Klagen im öffentlichen Intresse seit ihrer Einführung in Indien in den spÄten 70er Jahren wesentlichen Entwicklungen unterworfen gewesen und haben inzwischen LegitimitÄt erreicht. Sie haben sicherlich das moderne indische öffentliche Recht revolutioniert und haben in der jüngsten Vergangenheit eine wichtige Rolle beim Umweltschutz und beim Verbraucherschutz gespielt. Der Beitrag diskutiert die Rolle der Klagen im öffentlichen Interesse und hebt neuere Entwicklungen im Zusammenhang mit dem neu entstehenden Verbraucherrecht in Indien hervor.

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The author wishes to express his gratitude to Dr. Werner F. Menski, Senior Lecturer in Laws, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, for his valuable comments on an earlier draft of this paper.     

Enhancing National Security and Energy Security in the Post-911 Era: Group Decision Support for Strategic Policy Analysis under Conditions of Conflict

Energy source diversity has become a fundamental principle of both US energy security and national security. The decision of whether or not to approve a new power plant facility in the US involves complex group decision and negotiation processes. These contentious, value-laden, and multi-faceted self organizing processes involve many decision makers (broad constituencies) with conflicting priorities and dynamic preferences, high decision stakes, limited technical information (both in terms of quality and quantity), and difficult tradeoffs. As population pressures and energy demands continue to mount, advances in conflict resolution can help to improve power plant siting processes as well as US energy security and national security. Specifically, this paper uses advances in the Graph Model for Conflict Resolution and its associated decision support system (DSS) GMCR II to analyze strategic aspects of a multi-party energy dispute involving the co-management of a shared air shed in the Fraser Lowland Eco-Region based on Sumas Energy 2 (SE2), a contentious power plant project proposed for the US side of the international border between the city of Abbotsford, British Columbia and town of Sumas, Washington. GMCR II provides strategic insights for enhancing energy security, national security, and environmental risk management in the United States.     

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 Usefulness of Social Norm Theory in Empirical Business Ethics Research: A Review and Suggestions for Future Research

In response to recent calls to extend the underlying theories used in the literature (O’Fallon and Butterfield in J Bus Ethics 59(4):375–413, 2005; Craft in J Bus Ethics 117(2):221–259, 2013), we review the usefulness of social norm theory in empirical business ethics research. We begin by identifying the seeds of social norm theory in Adam Smith’s (in: Raphael and Macfie (eds) The Theory of Moral Sentiments, the Glasgow Edition, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1759/1790) seminal work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Next, we introduce recent theory in social norm activation by Bicchieri (The grammar of society: The nature and dynamics of social norms, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2006) and compare the new theory to two theoretical frameworks found in the literature: Kohlberg’s (in: Goslin (ed) Handbook of socialization theory and research, Rand McNally, Chicago, IL, 1969; in: Lickona (ed) Moral development and behavior, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, New York, 1976) theory of moral development and Cialdini and Trost’s (in: Gilbert et al. (eds) The handbook of social psychology, Oxford University Press, Boston, 1998) taxonomy of social norms. We argue that the new theory provides useful insights by emphasizing the ability of situational cues and information to generate common expectations for social/moral norms. The theory is particularly useful for empirical research in business ethics because it gives both organizational and individual factors a role in motivating norm-based behavior. To demonstrate this usefulness, we present examples where the theory has been effectively applied in experimental accounting research to generate new insights. We conclude by citing specific examples where the theory may prove useful in empirical business ethics research.     

The Role of Corporate Value Clusters in Ethics, Social Responsibility, and Performance: A Study of Financial Professionals and Implications for the Financial Meltdown

This article delves into a potential mindset that may be responsible for the recent financial meltdown. Research relating to this mindset from different perspectives is reviewed. The findings from this literature review are used to create a conceptual framework for the empirical, ethical, and corporate social responsibility study of financial professionals. Data were collected from a survey of the professional membership of a large national association of financial professionals. This article reports the results of the analysis of data relative to the relationships among the four constructs—financial professionals’ perceived organizational value clusters, ethics, corporate social responsibility, and corporate performance. The findings indicate that organizational core values significantly affect corporate ethics, social responsibility, and financial performance. We propose that organizations in the financial industry can move toward being more ethical and socially responsible by adopting organic core values (e.g., democratic, open, trusting, enterprising, creative, stimulating) and moving away from mechanistic values (e.g., structured, regulated, procedural, authoritarian, closed, callous). We also found the adaptation of organic core values does not require the organization to suffer a loss in financial performance.     

山村民俗行为与生态环境变迁的互动机制研究——以江浙山村社会民俗为例

人类群体对于所处的生态环境的切身体会以及对生态环境的磨合适应,即是民俗生成的生态本源。许多山村民俗带有明显的生态意识,体现出当地居民朴素的和谐理念。以生态学的视角来重新审视山村民俗,从单纯的民俗事象研究,转向在历史与文化语境中研究民俗,强调环境调查,尤其强调在社会环境中观察生产民俗、生活民俗的情境与在此之间的人际互动,可以帮助我们发现社会生活、社会关系、文化传统与所处自然环境之间的联系与契合。