Collective Decision Making

This paper presents a notion for developing Organizational Decision Support Systems (ODSS). The lens used is to see ODSS as a specialization of Social Decision Support Systems (SDSS) and a generalization of Group Decision Support Systems (GDSS). A unit decision process can be raised by any person in a organizational whole, the organization itself or some sub-organization. The decision process can use a given formalism coherent with the idea that as the contributions from people in the decision process expands, so does the space of available perceptions (P), the space of available actions (A), strategies (S), and options (O), the space of available criteria (C) of valuation of options (V), leading to decision. Atomic decision processes link in the global decision process of the organization. Potential benefits, shortcomings and needed technologies are indicated as well as prospects of development.

Collective behavior based on self-organization has been shown in group-living animals from insects to vertebrates. These findings have stimulated engineers to investigate approaches for the coordination of autonomous multirobot systems based on self-organization. In this experimental study, we show collective decision-making by mixed groups of cockroaches and socially integrated autonomous robots, leading to shared shelter selection. Individuals, natural or artificial, are perceived as equivalent, and the collective decision emerges from nonlinear feedbacks based on local interactions. Even when in the minority, robots can modulate the collective decision-making process and produce a global pattern not observed in their absence. These results demonstrate the possibility of using intelligent autonomous devices to study and control self-organized behavioral patterns in group-living animals.

Avaliacao do processo de tomada de decisao na determinacao de rotas em Acromyrmex subterraneus (Forel, 1893) (Hymenoptera, Formicidae). O forrageamento e imprescindivel a sobrevivencia e reproducao dos animais, devendo ser entendido como um imperativo biologico. Operarias de formigas cortadeiras utilizam de forma sinergica informacoes individual (memoria) e social (feromonio de trilha) a fim de selecionar e transportar o alimento. Este transporte ocorre por meio de uma rede de trilhas quimicas e fisicas, estas por sua vez apresentam varias bifurcacoes. Em cada bifurcacao a tomada de decisao sobre qual rota seguir pode estar relacionada com (i) o comprimento de cada ramo da trilha, (ii) a qualidade do alimento ao final de cada ramo e (iii) a hierarquia estabelecida na utilizacao das informacoes disponiveis. Investigou-se a influencia destes tres fatores na determinacao de rotas de forrageamento utilizando sistemas de trilhas artificiais. Verificou-se a escolha de rotas em tres pontos...

Written as a chapter in the Handbook of Development Economics, edited by Dani Rodrik and Mark Rosenzweig to be published by North Holland. We are grateful to Frederico Finan and Robert Putnam for providing us with their data to Mar a Ang elica Bautista for her research assistance and Dani Rodrik for his detailed comments on an earlier draft.

A well known and established model in communication policy in sociology and marketing is that of opinion leadership. Opinion leaders are actors in a society who are able to affect the behavior of other members of the society called followers. Hence, opinion leaders might have a considerable impact on the behavior of markets and other social agglomerations being made up of individual actors choosing among a number of alternatives. For marketing or policy purposes it appears to be interesting to investigate the effect of different opinion leader-follower structures in markets or any other collective decision-making situations in a society. We study a two-action model in which the members of a society are to choose one action, for instance, to buy or not to buy a certain joint product, or to vote yes or no on a specific proposal. Each of the actors has an inclination to choose one of the actions. By definition opinion leaders have some power over their followers, and they exercise this power by influencing the behavior of their followers, i.e. their choice of action. After all actors have chosen their actions, a decision-making mechanism determines the collective choice resulting out of the individual choices. Making use of bipartite digraphs we introduce novel satisfaction and power scores which allow us to analyze the actors' satisfaction and power with respect to the collective choice for societies with different opinion leader-follower structures. Moreover, we study common dictator and opinion leader properties of the above scores and illustrate our findings for a society with five members.

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The purpose of this research was to examine the Apis dorsata distribution and nesting habits in urban Nagpur. According to the findings, there were about 75 nests in urban Nagpur. Among these 73 per cent were active nests and 21 per cent were abandoned nests. The nesting preference was found to be among the tall building (60%). Out of these nests, 30 per cent were found shielded from the rain and wind, 57 per cent exposed and 13 per cent partially protected. It was noted that the A. dorsata's habit of building nests was unaffected by the existence of a nearby body of water, as most of the nests were located away from the waterbody.

Electronic institutions provide a computational analogue of human institutions to engineer open environments in which agents can interact in an autonomous way while complying with the norms of an institution. We survey the currently available infrastructures to engineer open environments as electronic institutions: (i) AMELI, the coordination infrastructure which is core to run EIs; and (ii) the conversion of the AMELI infrastructure to run over a peer to peer network. We also discuss the type of applications that both infrastructures target at.

Iván Barreda(a), Aurora García(a)(b), Nikolaos Georgantzís(a)(b) ¤ , Joaquín Andaluz(c), and Agustín Gil(c). LINEEX 11/00 Working Paper on Experimental Economics and Political Decision Making (a)Universitat Jaume I -Castellón (b)LINEEX -Valencia

For agent-based modelling of collective phenomena individual agent behaviours can be modelled either from an agent-internal perspective, in the form of relations involving internal states of the agent, or from an agentexternal, behavioural perspective, in the form of input-output relations for the agent, abstracting from internal states. Illustrated by a case study on collective decision making, this paper addresses how the two types of agent models can be related to each other. First an internal agent model for collective decision making is presented, based on neurological principles. It is shown how by an automated systematic transformation a behavioural model can be obtained, abstracting from the internal states. In addition, an existing behavioural agent model for collective decision making incorporating principles on social diffusion is described. It is shown under which conditions and how by an interpretation mapping the obtained abstracted behavioural agent model can be related to this existing behavioural agent model for collective decision making.

In this paper, we study the problem of collective decision-making over combinatorial domains. We focus on a particular social choice rule, namely Smith/Minimax. We introduce a distributed protocol for collective decision-making, which is general enough and does not restrict the choice of preference representation languages. The final decision chosen is guaranteed to be a Smith member, and is sufficiently close to the Smith/Minimax candidate. Moreover, it enables distributed decision-making and significantly reduces the amount of dominance testings (individual outcome comparisons) that each agent needs to conduct, as well as the number of pairwise comparisons.

The median voter hypothesis has been central to an extensive literature on consequences of income distribution. For example, it has been proposed that greater inequality is associated with lower growth, because of the greater redistribution that is sought by the median voter when income distribution is less equal. There have however been no proper tests of the median-voter hypothesis concerning redistribution, because of previous absence of data on factor income distribution (that is, incomes before taxes and transfers) across households, and thus on the gains by poorer households from redistribution. The study reported in this paper is based on the required data, with 79 observations drawn from household budget surveys from 24 democracies. The results strongly support the conclusion that countries with greater inequality of factor income redistribute more to the poor. This is so even when we control for the share of the elderly in the population and for pension transfers. The evidence that the median-voter hypothesis adequately describes the collectivechoice mechanism is however considerably weaker. Although middle-income groups gain more/or lose less through redistribution in countries where initial (factor) income distribution is more unequal, this regularity is all but lost when, by excluding pensions, we look only at explicit redistributive social transfers from which the middle classes contemporaneously gain little.This leaves us searching for alternative explanations: do middle-classes gain from transfers in the long-run even if not contemporeneously?, or is the median voter hypothesis, based on direct democracy, a proper representation of the the mechanisms of collectivedecision making in representative democracy? JEL classification: D31, E62

There is a great deal of plausibility to the standard view that if one is rational and it is clear at the time of action that a certain move, say M 1 , would serve one's concerns better than any other available move, then one will, as a rational agent, opt for move M 1. Still, this view concerning rationality has been challenged at least in part because it seems to conflict with our considered judgments about what it is rational to do in cases of temptation that share the structure of Warren Quinn's self-torturer case. I argue that there is a way to accomodate our considered judgments about the relevant cases of temptation without giving up the standard view or dismissing, as in some way rationally defective, the concerns of the agents in the relevant cases. My reasoning relies on the idea that, at least in some cases, whether an action serves one's concerns well depends on what action(s) or course(s) of action it is part of. In the final section of the paper, I explain how this idea sheds light on an important source of frustration in collective decision-making. KEY WORDS. collective decision-making, planning, practical deliberation, rationality, temptation, the puzzle of the self-torturer

A well-known model in sociology and marketing is that of opinion leadership. Opinion leaders are actors who are able to affect the behavior of their followers. Hence, opinion leaders have some power over their followers, and they can exercise this power by influencing their followers choice of action. We study a two-action model for a society with opinion leaders. We assume that each member of the society has an inclination to choose one of these actions and that the collective choice is made by simple majority of the actions chosen by each member. For this model we axiomatize satisfaction and power scores, which allow us to investigate the effects of different opinion leader-follower structures. Résumé Un modèle bien connu en sociologie et gestion est celui du leadership d'opinion. Les leaders d'opinion sont des acteurs qui peuvent influer sur les comportements de leurs disciples. En conséquence, les leaders d'opinion ont un certain pouvoir sur leurs disciples et ils peuvent exercer ce pouvoir en influençant le choix d'action de leurs disciples. Nousétudions un modèle de deux actions pour une société avec des leaders d'opinion. Nous supposons que chaque membre de la société a une inclination de choisir une des actions et que le choix collectif est fait par la majorité simple des actions choisies par chaque membre. Pour ce modèle nous axiomatisons les scores de satisfaction et de pouvoir, ce qui nous permet d'examiner les effets des différentes structures de leader d'opinion-disciples.

A well known and established model in communication policy in sociology and marketing is that of opinion leadership. Opinion leaders are actors in a society who are able to affect the behavior of other members of the society called followers. Hence, opinion leaders might have a considerable impact on the behavior of markets and other social agglomerations being made up of individual actors choosing among a number of alternatives. For marketing or policy purposes it appears to be interesting to investigate the effect of different opinion leader-follower structures in markets or any other collective decision-making situations in a society. We study a two-action model in which the members of a society are to choose one action, for instance, to buy or not to buy a certain joint product, or to vote yes or no on a specific proposal. Each of the actors has an inclination to choose one of the actions. By definition opinion leaders have some power over their followers, and they exercise this power by influencing the behavior of their followers, i.e. their choice of action. After all actors have chosen their actions, a decision-making mechanism determines the collective choice resulting out of the individual choices. Making use of bipartite digraphs we introduce novel satisfaction and power scores which allow us to analyze the actors' satisfaction and power with respect to the collective choice for societies with different opinion leader-follower structures. Moreover, we study common dictator and opinion leader properties of the above scores and illustrate our findings for a society with five members.

On March 28, 1991, Prime Minister Josef Antall delivered an important speech in front of the Atlantic Council, reaffirming his nation’s willingness to adhere to Euro-Atlantic values. He expressed gratitude to the Alliance for safeguarding the western part of Europe throughout the Cold War, emphasizing that its establishment in 1949 had consistently served as a «source of hope for people residing behind the Iron Curtain». Furthermore, he articulated that among the most significant milestones of his life, a pivotal moment had arisen when he proffered and subsequently affixed his signature in July 1991 to the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact. The Prime Minister’s words were greeted with jubilation by Atlantic leaders and Secretary General Manfred Wörner. Indeed, the new diplomatic friendship between the Alliance, Budapest and other Visegrád members was seen as one of the founding pillars of the new Atlantic soft power. A few months earlier, on the other hand, Czechoslovak President Vaclav Havel and Nobel Prize Lech Wałęsa had also definitively archived their nations’ communist past. Simultaneously, two distinct diplomatic negotiations were in progress: the first aimed at accession to the European family, while the second sought to foster closer cooperation with the Atlantic Alliance. The celebration of the Western way of life and its constitutional values became for Visegrád members the sine qua non for presenting themselves in the eyes of Washington, the European Community and the Bretton Woods Institutions as reliable and credible partners.
Keywords: NATO, hand of friendship, dual negotiations, communnism’s abjuration, North Atlantic Cooperation Council, mediation.

In group-living animals, aggregation favours interactions as well as information exchanges between individuals, and allows thus the emergence of complex collective behaviors. In previous works, a model of a self-enhanced aggregation was deduced from experiments with the cockroach Blattella germanica. In this work, this model was implemented in micro-robots Alice and successfully reproduced the agregation dynamics observed in a group of cockroaches. We showed that this aggregation process, based on a small set of simple behavioral rules and interactions among individuals, can be used by the group of robots to select collectively an aggregation site among two identical or different shelters. Moreover, we showed that the aggregation mechanism allows the robots as a group to "estimate" the size of each shelter during the collective decision-making process, a capacity which is not explicitly coded at the individual level but that simply emerges from the aggregation behaviour.

We studied the formation of trail patterns by Argentine ants exploring an empty arena. Using a novel imaging and analysis technique we estimated pheromone concentrations at all spatial positions in the experimental arena and at different times. Then we derived the response function of individual ants to pheromone concentrations by looking at correlations between concentrations and changes in speed or direction of the ants. Ants were found to turn in response to local pheromone concentrations, while their speed was largely unaffected by these concentrations. Ants did not integrate pheromone concentrations over time, with the concentration of pheromone in a 1 cm radius in front of the ant determining the turning angle. The response to pheromone was found to follow a Weber's Law, such that the difference between quantities of pheromone on the two sides of the ant divided by their sum determines the magnitude of the turning angle. This proportional response is in apparent contradiction with the well-established non-linear choice function used in the literature to model the results of binary bridge experiments in ant colonies (Deneubourg et al. 1990). However, agent based simulations implementing the Weber's Law response function led to the formation of trails and reproduced results reported in the literature. We show analytically that a sigmoidal response, analogous to that in the classical Deneubourg model for collective decision making, can be derived from the individual Weber-type response to pheromone concentrations that we have established in our experiments when directional noise around the preferred direction of movement of the ants is assumed.

Insect societies are often confronted with choices among several options such as food sources of different richness or potential nest sites with different qualities. The mechanisms by which a colony as a whole evaluates these situations and takes the appropriate decision are of crucial importance for its survival. Here we studied how collective decisions arise from individual behaviors when a group of workers of the ant Messor barbarus is given a choice between two aggregation sites. Two hundred ants were introduced into an arena and given a choice between two tubes connected to the arena. The tubes had different physical properties: dry and transparent (termed as dry), humid and transparent (termed as humid), or dry and dark (termed as dark). After 30 min, most ants were found to be aggregated in a humid tube when paired with a dry tube, or in a dark tube when paired with a humid one. When two humid tubes were in competition, ants aggregate more in one of the sites. The choice of ants was consistent throughout experiments. An analysis of individual behaviors shows that the probability of an ant recruiting and the intensity of its trail-laying behavior strongly depend on the quality of the tubes. Our study suggests that the selection of an aggregation site does not require that individual ants directly compare sites, but rather relies on the synergy between amplification processes involving recruitment by chemical trails, and a modulation of the individual resting time in a site as a function of its population.

Self-amplification processes are at the origin of several collective decision phenomena in insect societies. Understanding these processes requires linking individual behavioral rules of insects to a choice dynamics at the colony level. In a homogeneous environment, the German cockroach Blattella germanica displays self-amplified aggregation behavior. In a heterogeneous environment where several shelters are present, groups of cockroaches collectively select one of them. In this article, we demonstrate that the restriction of the self-amplified aggregation behavior to distinct zones in the environment can explain the emergence of a collective decision at the level of the group. This hypothesis is tested with robotics experiments and dedicated computer simulations. We show that the collective decision is influenced by the available spaces to explore and to aggregate in, by the size of the population involved in the aggregation process and by the probability of encounter zones while t...

The median voter hypothesis has been central to an extensive literature on consequences of income distribution. For example, it has been proposed that greater inequality is associated with lower growth, because of the greater redistribution that is sought by the median voter when income distribution is less equal. There have however been no proper tests of the median-voter hypothesis concerning redistribution, because of previous absence of data on factor income distribution (that is, incomes before taxes and transfers) across households, and thus on the gains by poorer households from redistribution. The study reported in this paper is based on the required data, with 79 observations drawn from household budget surveys from 24 democracies. The results strongly support the conclusion that countries with greater inequality of factor income redistribute more to the poor. This is so even when we control for the share of the elderly in the population and for pension transfers. The evidence that the median-voter hypothesis adequately describes the collectivechoice mechanism is however considerably weaker. Although middle-income groups gain more/or lose less through redistribution in countries where initial (factor) income distribution is more unequal, this regularity is all but lost when, by excluding pensions, we look only at explicit redistributive social transfers from which the middle classes contemporaneously gain little.This leaves us searching for alternative explanations: do middle-classes gain from transfers in the long-run even if not contemporeneously?, or is the median voter hypothesis, based on direct democracy, a proper representation of the the mechanisms of collectivedecision making in representative democracy? JEL classification: D31, E62

A secure routing scheme for mobile wireless sensor networks such things as robots. For example, research into mobile WSNs are Robomote, 2 Emulab, 3 and ZebraNet. Challenges in mobile WSNs include deployment, localization, selforganization, navigation, coverage, and energy maintenance. One difference between static and mobile WSNs is routing, i.e., dynamic routing is used in a mobile WSN, unlike a static WSN which uses fi xed routing or fl ooding. The issue of security in WSNs must be addressed because WSNs may be deployed in potentially adverse or hostile environments. Adversaries can inject jamming, which may cause not only false alarms, but also depletion of the limited energy of sensor nodes. Frequency-hopping (FH) is a well-known spread-spectrum method of transmitting radio signals by rapidly changing the frequency channel using a predefi ned hopping sequence known to both transmitter and receiver. Although FH is resistant to jamming by external malicious nodes which have no knowledge of the sequence, it is of no effect against attacks by internal compromised nodes which know the sequence. Since the computation and storage constraints of low-end sensor nodes make complex cryptographybased mechanisms for creating the hopping sequence unfeasible, it is necessary to create the sequence simply and securely. In this article, we propose a secure scheme for creating a hopping sequence for mobile wireless sensor networks. The proposed scheme is based on the idea of statistical enroute fi ltering (SEF). In SEF, assuming that the same event can be detected by multiple nodes, forwarding nodes along the way to the base station can statistically detect false reports en-route. SEF has achieved the early detection of false data reports with low computation and communication overheads. We evaluated the performance of our scheme thorough simulations. The rest of the article is organized as follows. In Sect. 2, we describe the frequency-hopping and the statistical enroute fi ltering in detail. Section 3 presents our secure scheme for creating the hopping sequence for mobile wireless sensor networks. In Sect. 4, we evaluate the performance of our scheme thorough simulations, and Sect. 5 concludes the paper.

Ce numéro spécial de la Revue Suisse d'Anthropologie Culturelle et Sociale souhaite prêter attention aux pratiques d'assemblées comme outil de décisions collectives au sein de groupes humains qui revendiquent des formes multiples d'autonomie politique vis-à-vis des États. Ce dossier se propose d'ethnographier des processus décisionnels dans divers espaces sociaux, aussi bien en contexte autochtone postcolonial (Amazonie, Andes, Amérique du Nord) que dans un mouvement social de l'Europe occidentale (Espagne). La description de ces réunions donne à voir une multiplicité de stratégies que les personnes inventent et mettent en oeuvre pour décider ensemble, former une union politique et essayer de faire société selon des termes distincts de ceux qui caractérisent le modèle étatique. Par-là, ces ethnographies invitent à réinterroger les outils conceptuels de l'anthropologie pour penser le politique.

Les effectifs des enseignant-e-s-chercheur-e-s en sciences de l'éducation (discipline relativement récente) passent de 114 en 1978 à 668 en 2015 et cette augmentation s'accompagne d'un processus de féminisation. Pour autant, les carrières académiques sont ségréguées sur le plan sexué, avec 35,8 % de professeures. Une enquête exploratoire auprès d'un échantillon représentatif portant sur leurs représentations du métier, les activités de recherche et d'enseignement, ainsi que les rapports que ces universitaires entretiennent face aux transformations du travail et du monde universitaire met en lumière des logiques sexuées marquées.

This paper aimed to empirically describe the power imbalances issues in setting the minimum wage in Bandung Regency and West Bandung Regency. Formally, Regional Wage Council has been established based on equality. However, several power imbalances have occurred within it. This paper also aimed to figure out the way to balance the power in collective decision making in the case of minimum wage setting. Furthermore, the research method used in this research was based on qualitative approach. Also, informants in this research were members of Regional Wage Council, employers in the industrial sector, and trade unions/labor unions in Bandung Regency and West Bandung Regency. The results of this study showed that power imbalances empirically existed in the setting of minimum wage. These imbalances were due to the issues of representatives, the number of members, information resources, and uncertainty. Moreover, power imbalances in the setting of minimum wage have led to the government’s m...

is commonly considered an essential requirement for power measures; violation of local monotonicity or related postulates supposedly disqualifies an index as a valid yardstick for measuring power. This paper questions if such claims are really warranted. In the light of features of real-world collective decision making such as coalition formation processes, ideological affinities, a priori unions, and strategic interaction, standard notions of monotonicity are too narrowly defined. A power measure should be able to indicate that power is non-monotonic in a given dimension of players' resources if-given a decision environment and plausible assumptions about behaviour-it is non-monotonic.

Classical power analysis does not involve preferences of players (parties). Classical power indices are constructed under assumption of equal probability of occurrence for each coalition. The paper contains a proposition of relaxation of this assumption, based on extended Shapley-Shubik power index approach.

A secure routing scheme for mobile wireless sensor networks such things as robots. For example, research into mobile WSNs are Robomote, 2 Emulab, 3 and ZebraNet. 4 Challenges in mobile WSNs include deployment, localization, selforganization, navigation, coverage, and energy maintenance. One difference between static and mobile WSNs is routing, i.e., dynamic routing is used in a mobile WSN, unlike a static WSN which uses fi xed routing or fl ooding. The issue of security in WSNs must be addressed because WSNs may be deployed in potentially adverse or hostile environments. Adversaries can inject jamming, which may cause not only false alarms, but also depletion of the limited energy of sensor nodes. Frequency-hopping (FH) is a well-known spread-spectrum method of transmitting radio signals by rapidly changing the frequency channel using a predefi ned hopping sequence known to both transmitter and receiver. 5,6 Although FH is resistant to jamming by external malicious nodes which have no knowledge of the sequence, it is of no effect against attacks by internal compromised nodes which know the sequence. Since the computation and storage constraints of low-end sensor nodes make complex cryptographybased mechanisms for creating the hopping sequence unfeasible, it is necessary to create the sequence simply and securely. In this article, we propose a secure scheme for creating a hopping sequence for mobile wireless sensor networks. The proposed scheme is based on the idea of statistical enroute fi ltering (SEF). 7 In SEF, assuming that the same event can be detected by multiple nodes, forwarding nodes along the way to the base station can statistically detect false reports en-route. SEF has achieved the early detection of false data reports with low computation and communication overheads. We evaluated the performance of our scheme thorough simulations. The rest of the article is organized as follows. In Sect. 2, we describe the frequency-hopping and the statistical enroute fi ltering in detail. Section 3 presents our secure scheme for creating the hopping sequence for mobile wireless sensor networks. In Sect. 4, we evaluate the performance of our scheme thorough simulations, and Sect. 5 concludes the paper.

This paper addresses a collective decision model based on interacting adaptive agents that learn from their experiences by a Hebbian learning mechanism. The decision making process makes use of emotionrelated valuing of decision options on the one hand based on predictive loops through feeling states, and on the other hand based on contagion. The resulting collective decision making process is analysed from the perspective of learning speed and rationality. It is shown how the collectiveness amplifies both learning speed and rationality of the decisions.

This paper studies a model of how political parties use resources for campaigning to inform voters. We show existence of equilibrium under mild assumptions for an arbitrary number of parties. The main result is that if the parties are more extreme, then they spend less resources on campaigning (on average), compared with moderate parties. The reason is the following. Consider voters that are informed by one party only, say party 1. If both parties move closer to each other, then the actual and expected platform moves closer to the indi¤erent voters peak. By concavity of preferences, the increase in payo¤ of voting for the party that informed is bigger than the increase in payo¤ of voting for the other party. Thus, the previously indi¤erent voter now strictly prefers party 1. The e¤ect makes parties gain more votes by informing when parties are moderate. Since spending increases, voters are (on average) more informed when parties are moderates.

IVIE working papers o®er in advance the results of economic research under way in order to encourage a discussion process before sending them to scienti¯c journals for their¯nal publication. * We want to thank M. Maschler and J. M. Zarzuelo for their insightful comments. This research has been supported by the Training and Mobility of Researchers programme initiated by the European Commission, by the IVIE, and by the DGES of the Spanish Ministerio de Educaci ¶ on y Cultura, under project PB96-0247.

We study how individuals divide themselves into coalitions and choose a public alternative for each coalition. When preferences have consecutive support and coalition feasible sets are positively population-responsive, the proposed consecutive benevolence solution generates allocations belonging to the coalition structure core and that are also Tiebout equilibria. However, when each coalition follows a single-valued collective decision rule, the coalition structure core may be empty. Our results show that if individual preferences are, in a sense, similar and if members can be as well o¤ when a coalition enlarges, then a stable formation of collective decision-making units can be guaranteed. A predetermined decision rule makes coalitions less stable.

This paper addresses a collective decision model based on interacting adaptive agents that learn from their experiences by a Hebbian learning mechanism. The decision making process makes use of emotionrelated valuing of decision options on the one hand based on predictive loops through feeling states, and on the other hand based on contagion. The resulting collective decision making process is analysed from the perspective of learning speed and rationality. It is shown how the collectiveness amplifies both learning speed and rationality of the decisions.

This paper addresses a collective decision model based on interacting adaptive agents that learn from their experiences by a Hebbian learning mechanism. The decision making process makes use of emotionrelated valuing of decision options on the one hand based on predictive loops through feeling states, and on the other hand based on contagion. The resulting collective decision making process is analysed from the perspective of learning speed and rationality. It is shown how the collectiveness amplifies both learning speed and rationality of the decisions.

This paper discuses the virtual enterprise (VE) as an intercompany collaborative tool for knowledge management. This concept, based on the internet and state-of-the-art information technologies, can be seen as the foundation for a firm's information resources. This paper presents the case VE, called SteelNet, based on an information technology (IT) solution deploying agent technology. The VE integrates dispersed companies and customers to ensure that all the members of the network receive accurate and timely information. The VE reported here provides a new solution for an unpredicted opportunity. Therefore, the VE is more of an action, rather than an institution.

This paper explores the reasons why economic instruments of climate change are reluctantly applied and stresses the need for interdisciplinary research linking economic theory and empirical testing to deliberative political procedures. It is divided in three parts. The first one recalls the main issues in implementing Cost-Benefit Analysis such as information problems, uncertainties, discounting the future and irreversibilities. The second part shows how these issues can be treated in integrated assessment and techno-economic models and presents a case study, which shows that r The chosen scenario tends to stabilize atmospheric CO 2 concentration at around 550 ppm in the long run. r Exclusion of possibility to trade CO 2 emission permits under a cap regime would increase the cost of emission abatement for OECD countries. r Combining different flexibility instruments might lead to significant gains in the overall cost of climate policy. The third part presents results of a survey conducted among the main economic and environmental associations in Switzerland. The survey reveals conflicting views on economic

The aim of this study is to develop simplified tools and methods in collaboration with local stakeholders to facilitate collective decision-making. The project is based on a series of experiments carried out between farmers and environmental officers and researchers (Aquae Project) 1 on the Aveyron-Lère catchment area. Within this framework:

Hansmann (1996) points out that a surprisingly large number of nonprofit firms operate in developed economies, often in sectors where they compete with for-profit firms. In this paper, we shed new light on the viability of nonprofit firms by studying the survival of nonprofit savings banks in the Norwegian banking industry after branching deregulations in the mid-1980s. We propose that banks' survival is related to the level of social capital in the local communities in which the banks operate. Using newspaper readership and charity donations to proxy for the amount of social capital, we estimate that an increase in social capital from the minimum to the maximum level observed in the sample increases the probability of survival for the average bank by approximately 10 percentage points at the time of deregulation. The result is robust to controls for, among others, bank equity, bank competition, population age and education. Our findings suggest that social capital may facilitate collective decision-making and the alignment of stakeholders' preferences.

This paper addresses a collective decision model based on interacting adaptive agents that learn from their experiences by a Hebbian learning mechanism. The decision making process makes use of emotionrelated valuing of decision options on the one hand based on predictive loops through feeling states, and on the other hand based on contagion. The resulting collective decision making process is analysed from the perspective of learning speed and rationality. It is shown how the collectiveness amplifies both learning speed and rationality of the decisions.

The combination of individual judgments on logically interconnected propositions into a collective decision on the same propositions is called judgment aggregation. Literature in social choice and political theory has claimed that judgment aggregation ...

The exchange of topology information is a potential attack target in mobile ad-hoc networks. To provide an intrinsic security mechanism, it is possible to validate topology advertisements in the control plane against records of the path taken by transmission in the data plane. In this context, we provide a discussion of different path recording mechanisms. We evaluate their performance in terms of packet overhead and reconstruction complexity. • Topology information via control plane: Routing message

In an earlier paper in this journal, we argued that current road safety programs and thinking are constructed within a paradigm that tends to accept existing cultural arrangements. The current paper is a sequel to the earlier one, and outlines significant policy themes emerging from a research project on a holistic approach to road safety. Two overarching themes include the importance of leadership for policy change and implementation, and addressing the more transformative aspects of intervening in a system. A distinction can be drawn between ''deep'' sustainable change, which usually requires fundamental redesign of the systems involved, and ''shallow'' adaptive change. Examples of deep change discussed include the much wider application of mobility management, a strong shift to active travel and public transport, and a reconsideration of how time is structured in society, as with the adoption of ''Slow Cities'' principles. Transformational leadership can draw on a variety of ''knowledge cultures'', which can all share in collective decision-making and possible actions for the future. We discuss especially leadership at the worldview, organisational, and community levels. Vision Zero approaches are valuable, but need to be integrated with a common vision for a sustainable transport system developed in conjunction with energy, transport, health, environment, and education agencies. In addition, Vision Zero approaches can be assisted by greater attention to and questioning of embedded cultural practices and behaviour.

Purpose-A distinguishing feature of the successful "post-Network Age" enterprise is its intrinsic entrepreneurial character that manifests itself in key organizational knowledge practices relating to organizational culture, processes, content and infrastructure. The purpose of this article is to explore organizational knowledge-based practices. Design/methodology/approach-The article reports on the outcome of field research in which entrepreneurial firms in four geographic regions were analyzed with the help of a diagnostic research tool specifically developed for profiling organizational knowledge-based practices. The diagnostic tool was applied in firms located in Silicon Valley in the USA, Singapore, The Netherlands and Israel. Findings-Key practices that were found to be common to leading-edge firms in all regions included: a propensity for experimentation; collective sharing of knowledge, and collective decision making. The paper describes the research in terms of a cross-cultural comparison of the four regions, derives key determinants of competitiveness, profiles regional characteristics which enhance innovation and entrepreneurship and closes with a discussion on the implications of the research outcomes for entrepreneurial firms seeking to build a global presence. Originality/value-The research provides evidence that innovative, entrepreneurial firms-no matter where they are located-tend to exhibit organizational knowledge practices, cultural beliefs, values and behavioral norms that are more akin than dissimilar, regardless of national context.

In this paper, we study the problem of collective decision-making over combinatorial domains. We focus on a particular social choice rule, namely Smith/Minimax. We introduce a distributed protocol for collective decision-making, which is general enough and does not restrict the choice of preference representation languages. The final decision chosen is guaranteed to be a Smith member, and is sufficiently close to the Smith/Minimax candidate. Moreover, it enables distributed decision-making and significantly reduces the amount of dominance testings (individual outcome comparisons) that each agent needs to conduct, as well as the number of pairwise comparisons.

This paper addresses the problem of collective decision making in the case where the agents' preferences are represented by CP-nets (Conditional Preference Networks). Most existing works either do not consider the computational issues, or depend on a strong assumption that all the agents share a common preferential independence structure. To this end, this paper proposes an efficient approach, called CDMCP (Collective Decision Making with CP-nets), for aggregating multiple agents' preferences according to majority rule. The proposed approach allows the agents to have different preferential independence structures and is computationally efficient.