The fields of foreign policy and public policy have had very little interaction, yet a vast trove of scholarly work in the discipline of public policy exists alongside great contributions to foreign policy decision making (FPDM). The purpose of this article is to provide a review of the literature within the discipline of FPDM which is focused on key group decision-making models, enriched by the application of a well-known public policy concept, the policy cycle. Both public policy and foreign policy deal with group decision-making analysis, yet their toolkits are quite distinct. By engaging in cross-fields efforts, scholars can fill gaps and bring new insights in the respective fields. Specifically, we demonstrate an association between stages of the policy cycle and leading models of group decision-making dynamics. We first lay the public policy foundations for our review by providing a brief summary of the policy cycle broadly and then more precisely the stages of policy formulation, decision making, and implementation. We then highlight a new framework (the group decision-making continuum) and summarize three leading models of group decision-making dynamics within the literature of FPDM: groupthink, polythink, and con-div. We discuss the foundations and current trends in the application of each model to foreign policy and national security decision making. We will demonstrate how scholars have utilized these leading models to explain foreign policy decisions. However, these scholars have not yet linked group dynamics to stages in the policy cycle. Likewise, none of these scholars have demonstrated how group dynamics may shift through stages of a foreign policy decision. Our review constructs a bridge between stages of the policy cycle and specific group decisionmaking models to expand on our understanding of foreign policy decision making. To illustrate the applicability of this interdisciplinary endeavor, we provide a brief example of group decision-making models within the context of policy stages of the Obama administration’s actions in the 2016 Raqqa Campaign against the Islamic State.

INTRODUCTION

LITERATURE REVIEW

HYPOTHESES DEVELOPMENT

RESEARCH DESIGN

ANALYSES AND RESULTS

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

REFERENCES

ABSTRACT

This study focuses on decision-making within operational teams. Grounding our argumentation on group decision-making literature, we argue that adverse behavior patterns may affect the way in which consensus is achieved within the team, and that team performance has an inverted U-shaped relationship with the level of consensus. Then, by relying on leadership literature, we pose the hypothesis that the level of shared leadership inside the group moderates this U-shaped relationship. To empirically test our literaturebased argumentation, we use longitudinal data collected in the years 2014 and 2015 from Business process reengineering projects, each lasting three months, conducted by 141 Master of Science Students grouped in 34 teams. We conclude by emphasizing that it is important to control for the occurrence of behaviors which lead to “fake” consensus within operational teams, by observing the individuals’ satisfaction with respect to the group decision as well as their active participation in the decision-making process.

INTRODUCTION

As long as organizations deal with increasing demands for efficiency and responsiveness, team-based work structures have become a pervasive organizational model to face such challenges (Boyett & Conn, 1992). Relying on effective and efficient groups at all organization’s levels is fundamental in order to achieve sustainable competitive advantage. In fact, not just top management teams, but also operational teams play a crucial role in determining processes’ efficiency, customer satisfaction, and company success (Bamford & Griffin, 2008). The effectiveness of a group decision-making process may be, however, threatened by a few psychological behaviors which influence the way groups make the decision (Riccobono, Bruccoleri, & Großler, 2016; Swaab, Phillips, & Schaerer, ¨ 2016). Two organizational behavior theories exist underlining the potential pitfalls of a group decision-making process, but they explain two different phenomena: the “Abilene Paradox (AP)” (Harvey, 1974), and “Groupthink (GT)” (Janis & Mann, 1977). The extent to which such phenomena could be a real threat in an operational context has been described by Riccobono et al. (2016) and an example of how they lead groups to ineffective behaviors is reported by McAvoy and Butler (2009), in their empirical study on two software development teams trying to reach consensus on the way a software package must be developed. In one case, the group chose to adopt a prioritization method different from the one recommended by the Agile Software Development approach, and, even if it was proven to be ineffective, the group seeking for unanimous consensus persisted in adopting it. Here the authors identify GT behavior, where the team achieves consensus mostly because of their “seeking for unanimity” willingness. In the other case, the group, even though not all group members agreed, decided to follow standardized company procedures in the adoption of the Agile approach that were not fitting the specific project, and that finally led to the failure of the project. Here the authors recognize the presence of the AP behavior, where the group decision is made, even with little consensus, because of the team members’ “conforming to the others” inclination.

The location of military engineering(LME) is an important aspect of battlefield environment construction in the future information condition. A success of LME, directly related to the realization of the national strategy, the rational use of national resources and the effective use of defense funds, operation command comprehensive coordination, the optimized allocation of battlefield target , etc. In the case of the construction of a large integrated strategic homeport, it is indispensable to support a growing fleet and the country’s frontier maritime strategy. In existing port or the port group, to chose the basic conditions are relatively good, and had the potential to extend the facility for key construction and make it to its homeport, not only conform to the requirements of the future naval strategy and berthing ship’s security requirements, but also can save construction investment, the navy can make full use of the facility results on the basis of the existing building, make more power for port shore facilities maintenance, update and supplement. In other words, a suitable location of the military port˄LMP˅ is of great significance to improve the strategic value, to give full play of security efficiency and to improve the military economic benefits. At present, there are a lot of existing location assessment methods, Xiao Ding et al. apply the method of entropy weight and ideal point method to select a site for civil port [1]. Huang Mingsheng and Taih-Cherng Lirn adopt AHP method to decided the weights of site selection [2] [3]; Liu Linhu et al. using principal component analysis to select candidate military logistics base, on the basis of the maximum coverage model are used to determine a location decision [4]. The mufti-objective decision model of military engineering location is constructed by Weng Dongfeng [5]. Halpern proposed a two-level standard plane model for the actual problem of site selection for the first time[6]. Ayfer and Ergin has applied ELECTRE method to the site selection of container ports [7]. It is required that when the above methods in constructing a model of the whole evaluation system has a complete cognitive structure, and the relationship between the accurate model covers the elements of information is less, but through the study found that the construction of port planning and site selection evaluation indicator is broad, the relevance between the indicators are hidden, the elements in the system is not absolutely independent, but mutual influence and interdependence. In order to make the result of LMP more reasonable and credible, this paper proposes a Bayesian-ANP-based assessment method, which is fused expert group of judgment through comprehensive consideration all experts preference indicator correlation of evaluation, and optimize the process of the construction of the ANP model, overcome the subjective arbitrariness of independent evaluation, improve the reliability of the ANP model.

Over the years, firms have been operating globally in a competitive market with a growing need for integrating economical, ecological and social aspects of the Triple Bottom Line (3BL) approach across a supply chain (Ahi and Searcy, 2015). Some of the issues of ecological and social aspects have been raised in several international forums, such as the Kyoto protocol and Paris summit. These initiatives have led to the evolution of the concept of the Sustainable Supply Chain. A vision of achieving a sustainable supply chain can only be realized by designing robust, system-wide processes meeting the desired deliverables and preferences of various stakeholders (Kleindorfer et al., 2005; Linton et al., 2007; Wu et al., 2016). In a similar vein, one cannot overlook the role of Supply Chain Processes (SCP) in achieving the sustainable development objective of industries. Research over the past decades at the firm and supply chain levels (Kleindorfer et al., 2005; Li et al., 2016) has addressed various issues pertaining to SCPs from the perspective of sustainability. Linton et al. (2007) also indicated that supply chain excellence could be achieved through efficient and effective movement of firm resources such as products, services, finances, and/or information between sources and consumers. The design of an integrated Sustainable Supply Chain Process (SSCP) using this perspective has evolved over time and has drawn attention from practitioners and researchers (Krikke et al., 2003; Jayaraman, 2006; Ahiand Searcy, 2013; Li et al., 2016; Wolf, 2011). The present study defines SSCPs as The key sustainable business processes across supply chain entities, which improve its performance along the three dimensions of the 3BL approach. The literature presents numerous theoretical analyses of sustainable supply chain practices. Touboulic and Walker (2015) have made a review of literature on the application of different management theories to sustainable supply chain. They have observed that the stakeholder theory used by Wolf (2014), Hörisch et al. (2014), and Mariadoss et al., (2016) and the resource-based view used by Newbert (2007) and Guide and Wassenhove (2009) are the ones that have been predominantly used for conceptualizing various aspects of sustainable supply chains. The present study attempts to identify the most significant SSCPs in the Indian manufacturing industries, from the perspectives of the stakeholder theory and the resource-based view.

مقاله سال 2016

 مجله امگا – Omega

When we are dealing with social choice problems, hypothetical conflicts between some ethical principles should not be ignored or covered up, but encouraged. In many general scenarios the principle of majority could be incompatible with the principle of minority, freedom could be incompatible with fairness (fraternity) or with equity, etc. see [7]. The basic question is “is it possible to quantify the degree of conflict between the achievements of these principles in a particular decision making problem”? Or equivalently, “is it possible to compute the degree of sacrifice of some principles in order to reach a final solution”? In short, instead of a prior position being adopted, ethical principles should be brought together until a convergent position is developed. When there are no easy solutions, a very likely situation, then principles must be willing to be sacrificed for the good of the consensus or final solution.

In this paper, we propose an analytical framework for dealing with three basic ethical principles, derived from the universal “Declaration of the Rights of Man”. This declaration is considered a basic pillar of the Western culture. It should be clarified from the beginning that the purpose of this research is merely to put some transparency to the possible ethical conflicts and not to solve them.

The three ethical principles, within a context of social choice, can be defined as follows: a) In social theory the idea of freedom is associated with the Benthamite or utilitarian principle that implies the maximization of the welfare of the society by maximizing the sum of total of the welfare of all the member of the society. Thus, a maximum individual freedom is preserved [1]. b) The idea of fairness is normally associated with the Rawlsian or minimax principle that emanates from the “veil of ignorance”, implying the maximization of the welfare of the worst-off individual. In that way, the idea of fraternity or fairness is optimized (see [14], especially pages 75–83). c) The idea of an even allocation of the total welfare between all the members of society, thus providing a maximum equity is usually associated with partial aspects of the Marxian political perspective.