Soft Management Science for Group Decision Support

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Soft Management Science for Group Decision Support

• Advanced Construction Management
• downloadable at
• cmis10.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/Horita.html

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Support for group decision making in the public
sector

• Towards more objective, neutral, independent,
  rational, non-prejudicial, less political
  decision-making??
• Demography / statistics
• Policy analysis / policy sciences
• Operational Research (OR)

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Rational Comprehensive Planning (Rosenhead,
1989)

• Identify objectives, with weights
• Identify alternative courses of action
• Predict consequence of actions in terms of
  objectives
• Evaluate the consequences on a common scale of
  value
• Select the alternative whose net benefit is
  highest

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Criterion 1
Criterion 2
Criterion n
Alt Aa1, a2.., an
Alt Bb1, b2.., bn
Alt Cc1, c2.., cn
gtgt ind. weighting wk1, wk2., wkn
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Critique of hard MS

• Both socially undesirable and practically
  infeasible
• Social experiment by RAND Corporation
• Planning, Programming and Budgeting System
• mid-60s in the US by Kennedy Johnson
  governments
• EPA in Japan
• Search by the drunken (Kaplan 1964)
• Management syndrome (Yakushiji 1989)
• Paradox of a pursued methodology
• Blame lack of data culture

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More critique of hard MS

• Criticism of positive social research
• Inclination to technical sophistication and
  computationally big problems
• Ackoff mathematically sophisticated but
  contextually naive
• Assumptions over the unique and static objective
  and constraints
• Assumption of the optimum solution

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An alternative paradigm

• Non dichotomy between subjects and objects
• Constructive realism
• Action Research Participatory Action Research
• Social constructionism

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• Uncertainty, risk, ambiguity, conflict and
  complexity

(Hopwood, 1980)
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Critique of subjective probability

• The best answer is based on weighting the
  various possible outcomes and averaging out.
• Appropriate for repetitive situations play the
  averages..
• But not so much in a unique problematic situation.

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• Donald Schon (1987)
• In the swampy lowland, messy, confusing problems
  defy technical solution. The irony of this
  situation is that the problems of the high ground
  tend to be relatively unimportant to individuals
  or society at large, however great their
  technical interest may be, while in the swamp lie
  the problems of greatest human concern. The
  practitioner must choose. Shall hesic remain on
  the high ground where he can solve relatively
  unimportant problems according to prevailing
  standards of rigor, or shall he descent to the
  swamp of important problems and non-rigorous
  inquiry?

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Characteristics for an alternative paradigm

• Non-optimising seeks acceptable alternatives
• Reduced data demands
• Simplicity and transparency
• Conceptualises people as active subjects
• Facilitates planning from the bottom-up
• Accepts uncertainty - keep options open

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Problem structuring methods

• Cognitive Mapping
• Soft Systems Methodology
• Soft Game Theory
• Strategic Choice Approach
• Robustness Analysis
• etc.

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Cognitive mapping

• Visualise decision-makers view of policies
• Model building regarding both quantitative and
  qualitative elements
• Psychological construction of the subject world
  (rather than the perception of it).
• Support strategic thinking
• Sharing organisational knowledge

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A cognitive map
Profit of Company A
Regional welfare
Market creation
Competition with other companies
Environmental Impact
Competition with other branch
Congestion
Active local economy
Open new branch not
Catchment quality
Market size gt
Population over X
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A comparison with decision tree
Market size gt X (p.6)

Profit 500m
Competition high (p.8)
Open new branch
below X (p.4)
low (p.2)
not
300m

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Integrating multiple cognitive maps
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An integrated cognitive map
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Integrating it with hard models
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Decision support systems

• Information systems with organisational knowledge
• Are able to cope with complexity of wicked
  problems
• Accept conflicting objectives
• Facilitate the evaluation through value judgement
• Assume differences among multiple
  decision-makers views.

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Traditional Decision Support Systems

• But should we really?
• A priori decision rules - not quite socially
  constructed
• Internal logic and assumptions invisible from
  end-users

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Soft GDSS (Eden 1995)

• Respect organisational history and culture
  relevant to the problem
• Focus on and model the deliberative process of
  group decision-making
• Relationship between a facilitator and a client

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