Browsing by Subject "Group decision making"
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Item A comparison of individual versus group decision making under uncertainty utilizing a simulated management game(Texas Tech University, 1976-08) Muhs, William FrederickNot availableItem A comparison of the performance of structured and unstructured groups in three levels of time pressure(Texas Tech University, 1999-12) Sprague, Vicki L.Few comparisons of structured and unstructured group performance in various stressfiil situations exist (e.g., Sprague, 1997; Worchel & Shackelford, 1991; Urban, Bowers, Monday, & Morgan, 1995). Given that time pressure Is the most common stressor in organizations. Experiment 1 compared the performance of three-member structured and unstructured groups in three time-pressure condhions. Structured and unstructured group performance was also compared to the performance of nominal groups. A 3 (no, low, and high levels of time pressure) x 5 (structured and unstructured groups and the best, middle, and worst members of nominal groups) ANOVA using the quaUty of group performance as the dependent variable revealed that structured and unstructured group performance did not differ significantly. The quality of structured and unstructiued group performance was significantly lower than the best nominal groupmember, indicating that structured and unstructured groups experienced a process loss when working on the logic problem task. Although performance quaUty differed significantly between all three time-pressure condhions, the predicted curvilinear relationship between time pressure and performance did not occur. Finally, the rate of group performance did not differ significantly across the three time-pressure conditions. Experiment 2, in a test of the social entrainment hypothesis proposed by Kelly, McGrath, and colleagues (e.g., Kelly & Karau, 1993; Kelly & McGrath, 1985; McGrath & Kelly, 1986), compared the performance of structured, unstructured, and nominal groups in two consecutive high time-pressure conditions. A 5 (structured and unstructured groups and the best, middle, and worst nominal group members) x 2 (costume and skiing versions of the logic problem task) mixed subjects ANOVA revealed that groups and Individuals worked at a lower rate in the second consecutive high timepressure condhion than in the first condhion. This unpredicted finding was attributed to the fact that groups and individuals faced a problem of capability when working on the logic problem task (i.e., the demands of the task exceeded available processing resources; Kelly, Futoran, & McGrath, 1990). Possible explanations for the lack of significant differences between structured and unstructured group performance and the failure to find the predicted curvilinear relationship between time pressure and performance quality are explored.Item A conceptual model and an implementation of an intelligent meeting-scheduler (IMS)(Texas Tech University, 1996-08) Glezer, ChananMeetings are a major liaison device for achieving mutual adjustment in organizations. Several commercial meeting-schedulers and academic prototypes attempt to provide assistance in the process of scheduling meetings; however, these systems focus mainly on the calendar management and integration functions. They do not provide tools for describing the meeting-content in advance or locating the most suitable invitees based on standard organizational knowledge. This research attempts to propose and validate a conceptual model for an Intelligent Meeting-Scheduler (IMS), which is a DSS that is capable of assisting organizations in scheduling meetings. The IMS is an integrated software system. It encapsulates scheduling tools and organizational knowledge that are used to support various activities within the scheduling process, such as meeting-content planning and group composition. Our model is based on the notion of software-agents, and consists of the following functional agents: Control-Manager, Communication-Manager, Scheduling-Manager and Calendar-Manager. These agents work in cooperation and provide assistance to the host and the invitees in negotiating an acceptable solution during a scheduling session. We also describe the knowledge architecture of the IMS, which consists of a set of knowledge-base agents that support the above functional agents.Item Cohesion, gender, and success or failure as factors in causal attribution(Texas Tech University, 1977-08) Megas, James ChristopherNot availableItem The economics of family and group decisions(2004) Lee, Jungmin; Hamermesh, Daniel S.This thesis examines group decision-making processes with emphasis on households’ decisions and behaviors. It is interesting to study the underlying decision-making processes within multi-person groups and organizations by extending and applying our knowledge in microeconomic theory: what is the raison d’tre for such institutions, when they are created and dissolved, and how they aggregate and resolve different preferences and values among members. The first essay estimates the trade-off between child quantity and quality by exploiting exogenous variations in fertility due to son preference, which prevails in many Asian countries. I find for the sample of Korean households that taste covariance is not minimal; adverse effects of fertility on child quality is, if any, smaller than what would be inferred from a cross-sectional relationship. The fall in fertility rate over the past decades does not account for increasing investment in children’s education. Linking population policy to fostering human capital could be misleading. The second essay utilizes longitudinal data to analyze the spouse’s individual budgets – “pocket money.” This unique data set allows for the specification of simultaneous process of household decision-making in a fully stochastic fashion. By doing this, it is possible to differentiate unobservable spousal bargaining power from heterogeneity at the household level. I find that while increasing female labor force involvement does lead to resource reallocation toward women within households, the favorable effect is not significant. On the other hand, a general improvement of family income has negative impacts on intra-household inequality, which partially confirms the Kuznets curve at the micro level. Lastly, spouses are significantly different in their preferences for education and clothing, but they are not for some other goods. The last essay examines a different context, beyond households, in which a group of individuals make aggregate decisions. Using the data on figure skating judges’ scorings, I find significant evidence for the existence of outlier aversion. Individual judges manipulate scores to achieve a targeted level of agreement with the other judges, and the dispersion of scores depends upon the type of judge-assessment system. One major implication of this paper, which is at variance with the industrial psychology and personnel management literature, is that agreement may not be a good criterion for the validity of an evaluation system.Item Gender, race, expectancy, and interpersonal behavior(Texas Tech University, 1983-012) Cruz-Barrera, Adriana de laThis study was designed to examine whether the expectancies of a group member would affect his interpersonal perceptions and subsequent behaviors during a set of discussions within a managerial decision making context. A review of the literature had indicated that a person's gender and race serve as cues for social categorization and that judgments about a person's behavior will be made in conjunction with a set of expectancies which are based on the person's group membership. Of particular relevance to this study was the type of social categorization process which leads to the structuring of one's world into two distinct groups: "us" (ingroup) and "them" (outgroup), Subjects in this study were Anglo m.ale undergraduates enrolled in an introductory management class at Texas Tech University. They participated in a three-member group discussion session in which the group leader was either a member of the ingroup (Anglo male) or of the outgroup (a Mexican American male or female or an Anglo female). Subjects rated the group leader on a number of rating scales. During the discussions, observers categorized the subjects and the leader's behaviors. A principal components analysis (PCA) revealed two factors on an impression formation questionnaire. A multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) using these two factors revealed that male leaders were rated more highly on the "Virility" factor than female leaders while Anglo leaders were rated more positively on the "Evaluation" factor than were Mexican American leaders. A MANOVA using the factors revealed by a PCA on a second set of ratings showed that Mexican American leaders were rated more extremely than Anglo leaders on a "Charisma" factor as had been predicted. When gender was denoted as the ingroup, this prediction was not substantiated on this factor. There were no differences due to the experimental manipulations in either the positive or negative socio-emotional behaviors exhibited by subjects and group leaders. This result is contrary to what had been predicted. The performance of group leaders was attributed to skill more than to luck, a result opposite to what had been hypothesized.Item Images and cognitive styles in strategic decision-making groups(Texas Tech University, 1995-12) Smith, Yvonne SueNot availableItem Mapping the team decision theory problem to Hopfield-like neural networks(Texas Tech University, 1993-12) Rao, GiridharTeam Decision Theory is a statistical discipline that has several applicationin areas such as decentralized control and distributed computing. In the middle to late 1970 s. this area was studied quite extensively. However, there were several limitations to the scope of the study due to the inherent mathematical intractability of the problem. There were severe restrictions on the nature of the system inputs and their probability distribution functions. Unless the underlying probability density functions of the system parameters were Gaussian, it was not possible to derive analytical solutions to the problems. In recent years, neural networks have become increasingly popular as a means to solve large optimization problems. The high interconnectivity and the nature of neuron layouts and interactions have led to success in mapping large optimization problems to neural networks. In particular the Hopfield-Tank Network and some derivations thereof have been successful for these problems. Neural networks are not sensitive to the underlying probability distributions of the systems they are trying to solve. With the advent of cheaper hardware and faster networks, distributed processing in a networked system has become increasingly popular. One of the key areas of study in distributed computing is the load balancing discipline: determining an optimal balancing of tasks or jobs among the various nodes in the system to maximize system performance and throughput. Several schemes have been studied with varying degrees of success.Item Persuasive message effects on individuals versus interacting groups(Texas Tech University, 1986-05) Norton, Larry WayneThe purpose of this dissertation was to examine the impact that a persuasive message has on group decision making among interacting face-to-face groups. The outcomes from these conditions were compared to those outcomes yielded from individuals' reactions to the same persuasive message. The logic underlying this approach is twofold: (1) To serve as a test of Petty and Cacioppo's Elaboration Likelihood Model generalizability to group behavior and, (2) to investigate the general question of whether groups and individuals process information in a similar fashion. The major dependent variables of interest were the degree to which subjects agreed with the arguments presented in the persuasive message, the valence of cognitive responses generated in reaction to the persuasive message, the extent to which individual group members influenced each other during group discussion, and the rate (in real time units) at which groups reached a decision. The design called for the use of a three-way analysis of variance where the factors were (1) source credibility, (2) personal involvement of the subjects in the attitude issue and, (3) individual subjects versus interacting groups. These comparisons were made at three time periods—before group discussion, the groups' collective responses, and after group discussion. The findings showed a partial confirmation of the hypothesis that groups and individuals would differ in their agreement with the persuasive message. Groups evidenced more message agreement after the conclusion of group discussion (i.e., as individuals) relative to individuals after an elaborative reprocessing of the persuasive message. It was hypothesized that the groups' collective responses would differ from those of individual subjects responding alone. Such an effect was not evidenced from the data. Results also showed that groups took longer to process the decision task as a function of the level of personal involvement in the persuasive message. Groups under the high personal involvement condition took longer to complete the task than did those subjects under the low involvement condition. It was also shown that the credibility manipulation had a greater impact on the way that individual group members influence the attitudes of each other during the process of group interaction than did the involvement manipulation. These findings are discussed in terms of (a) the elaboration likelihood model, (b) social versus informational influences on group related attitude change and, (c) the nature of persuasive message effects on individuals versus interacting groups.Item The effects of strength of relationship, information sharing, instruction orientation, and member resources on resource coordination and performance(Texas Tech University, 1993-05) Norton, Joseph JThe present study examined the effects of strength of relationship, ability differences, amount of shared information, and task orientation on triad resource coordination and performance. A significant main effect was found for ability difference. As ability differences increased there were increases in willingness to divide tasks unequziUy, increases in resource coordinaUon strategy effectiveness, and increases in triad performance. An interaction was found among ability difference, relationship and information sharing for sub-task allocation distribution. As ability differences increased, information sharing strangers, and friends and strangers with no information sharing had more variable allocation distributions than information sharing friends . Results also showed that triads with low task orientations were outperformed by triads with high task orientations as average ability increased. Task orientation had no effect on resource coordination, but regression analysis results showed that resource coordination accounted for more variance (41%) than average ability (22%) in predicting triad performance. It seems that the weighting procedure used by triads to coordinate their average abilities was an important determinant of triad performance. Findings from the present study suggest that triads were more likely to divide sub-tasks appropriately as their ability to use the information on ability difference increased. Bliese (1991) suggested that dyads coordinated their resources more appropriately only after members became comfortable with each other. Findings from the present study suggest that increased comfort had little to do with the appropriate coordination of resources. It was the information processing of triads, not their level of comfort, that determined the allocation distribution. The findings from the present study also suggest that variables that affect triad performance do not necessarily affect the quality of the resource coordination process and vice versa. Prescriptions for team development and future research are given.Item The influence of peer collaboration of interpersonal negotiation strategies(Texas Tech University, 1997-12) Fields, Gregory IanAlthough researchers have explored the advantages of collaborative interactions on several tasks, the present study examined the process and utility of peer collaboration in relation to the development of social reasoning skills. The Interpersonal Negotiation Strategies Interview (Schultz, Yeates, & Selman, 1989) was used to examine the effects of peer collaboration on a social reasoning task. Sixty male college undergraduates (mean age =18.9 years, range = 18.1 - 20.8 years) were randomly assigned to either an individual or collaborative condition. Within a pretest-posttest design, the ability to generate Interpersonal Negotiation Strategies (INSs)was measured. Subjects in the individual condition (n = 20) worked independently throughout the study while subjects in the collaborative condition (n = 40) were paired during the second session and encouraged to work with one another. All participants were asked to solve a series of standard questions regarding dilemmas of interpersonal conflict. Results indicated increased social reasoning levels for the collaborative condition but not for the individual condition. Increases were found not only when the collaborative condition worked together but also when they worked individually. Examinations of communication and skill level differences did not differentiate between higher and lower performing pairs. Although dyads with the lowest initial social reasoning levels scored less than the individual condition at the pretest session, they improved significantly during the interaction session to score higher than the participants from the individual condition. Examinations of contextual issues indicated that context significantly effects social reasoning both for individuals and dyads.