The standard rationality hypothesis is that behaviour can be represented as the maximization of a suitably restricted utility function. This hypothesis lies at the heart of a large body of recent work in economics, of course, but also in political science, ethics, and other major branches of the social sciences. Though this hypothesis of utility maximization deserves our continued respect, finding further refinements and developing new critiques remain areas of active research. In fact, many fundamental conceptual problems remain unsettled. Where others have been resolved, their resolutions may be too recent to have achieved widespread understanding among social scientists. Last but not least, a growing number of papers attempt to challenge the rationality hypothesis head on, at least in its more orthodox formulation. The main purpose of this Handbook is to make more widely available some recent developments in the area. Yet we are well aware that the final chapter of a handbook like this can never be written as long as the area of research remains active, as is certainly the case with utility theory. The editors originally selected a list of topics that seemed ripe enough at the time that the book was planned. Then they invited contributions from researchers whose work had come to their attention. So the list of topics and contributors is largely the editors' responsibility, although some potential con tributors did decline our invitation. Each chapter has also been refereed, and often significantly revised in the light of the referees' remarks."

Demography as a discipline is now at the point where its relevance to business decision making is indisputable--and top business management knows this. People who lack an understanding of state-of-the-art demographic techniques, and who cannot adapt to new ways of thinking prompted by demography and demographers, will find themselves significantly disadvantaged in today's competitive business environment. Pol and Thomas thus provide practitioners and students alike with a concise but intensive introduction to the concepts and methods of business demography. They chronicle current demographic trends and explain their meaning for business. With numerous examples drawn from business and industry, they make clear that business demography is truly a decision-making science.

Pol and Thomas introduce basic concepts, then present an overview of recent and future demographic trends. They elaborate on the application of current demographic methods to planning and marketing in the contemporary business environment, and illustrate their points with numerous charts, maps, and sidebars. Pol and Thomas provide many examples of real world situations in which demographic methods, data, perspective, and theory are actively applied. With sections on sources of health care data, the calculation of demographic rates, the demographic resources available and up-to-date statistics on current demographic trends, their book becomes not only a unique resource for professionals, but also a useful text and reference for their colleagues in the academic community.

This book introduces students on Multiple Criteria Decision Aiding and Making courses to practical, real-world cases. Each case study introduces a problem or situation together with a method, and a description and explanation of a computer application. In this sense each chapter is based on four pillars: the problem, the model building, the methods and their implementation. The book presents and elaborates a rich and comprehensive set of practical problems comprising multiple criteria, including numerous approaches for their solution, for decision support or decision aid. It complements traditional textbooks and lecture material by employing case studies to promote a deeper understanding of the investigated concepts and help students apply these methods to other areas.

Life after Boris is a quick-to-read fable that should encourage any partner - or indeed anyone aspiring to partnership - in a professional services firm, to make sure that the succession planning issue is addressed in their firm. It seeks to demonstrate that with good planning, collaboration and proactive discussion, options can be found that will be acceptable to all. Without such an approach, the consequences could be serious. Succession planning is not inherently difficult or intellectually complex. It does, however, strike many raw nerves, both with those who are currently at the top of their firms and are contemplating retirement (or not), and also with those in the early stages of their careers who are anxious to know what the future holds for them in their current firm. The frustration, of course, is that many stakeholders in the succession planning process (of which there are far more than one might originally envisage) rush into decisions because of the apparent lack of a succession plan, thereby simply exacerbating the problem for all the other stakeholders. It is therefore critical that all firms, and the stakeholders within those firms, address the succession planning question before it becomes an issue. Closing the stable door after the horse has bolted is simply not an option. Initiating the succession planning process need not necessarily come from the current leaders. Indeed, their failure to do so is often at the root of the problem. The bright leaders of tomorrow have much at stake and although a great deal of tact and sensitivity will be needed, it is often these future leaders of a firm who are best positioned to bring about change. In the author's experience over the last 12 years of working with professional services firms around the world, one of the most frequently recurring catalysts for discussion has been succession management. Firms that got it right developed and prospered. Those that didn't struggled and often ended up having to merge and ultimately disappear into oblivion.

We hear a lot about the necessity of meeting needs of changing markets by developing people, but we hear less about ways implement change. How can we design effective ways to implement change and maintain and build job satisfaction? James and Lori Spina illustrate how a strategic system aligns workplace transitions with the organizational vision, mission, and top level strategies to meet the needs of all stakeholders, ensure a steady flow of talent from within, and anticipate abilities and skills for jobs not yet created. They provide a road map for how to carry this out and propose a cutting-edge leadership style to complement this strategic approach and beat the competition. They demonstrate in detail on how to meet the emerging learning needs of high potential people who are striving to obtain new levels of responsibility. This book is crucial reading for executives who make strategic business decisions to ensure the sustainability and growth of their organizations.

Thought leader John Adair provides the techniques and insights you need to find solutions, spark creativity and confidently make the right decisions. This 5th edition now features even more practical exercises, useful templates, and top tips to provide a clear framework that can generate ideas and inspire confidence in your team - so you can spot the solution in every problem, and create ideas to rival even the best strategists. The Creating Success series of books... Unlock vital skills, power up your performance and get ahead with the bestselling Creating Success series. Written by experts for new and aspiring managers and leaders, this million-selling collection of accessible and empowering guides will get you up to speed in no time. Packed with clever thinking, smart advice and the kind of winning techniques that really get results, you'll make fast progress, quickly reach your goals and create lasting success in your career.

Risk Analysis: Foundations, Models, and Methods fully addresses the questions of "What is health risk analysis?" and "How can its potentialities be developed to be most valuable to public health decision-makers and other health risk managers?" Risk analysis provides methods and principles for answering these questions. It is divided into methods for assessing, communicating, and managing health risks. Risk assessment quantitatively estimates the health risks to individuals and to groups from hazardous exposures and from the decisions or activities that create them. It applies specialized models and methods to quantify likely exposures and their resulting health risks. Its goal is to produce information to improve decisions. It does this by relating alternative decisions to their probable consequences and by identifying those decisions that make preferred outcomes more likely. Health risk assessment draws on explicit engineering, biomathematical, and statistical consequence models to describe or simulate the causal relations between actions and their probable effects on health. Risk communication characterizes and presents information about health risks and uncertainties to decision-makers and stakeholders. Risk management applies principles for choosing among alternative decision alternatives or actions that affect exposure, health risks, or their consequences.

The COVID-19 pandemic provides an illustration of how chaotic changes to large systems are caused by small, seemingly insignificant environmental events such as the initial case(s) of COVID-19 in China. From this small starting point for the pandemic, there have been (and continue to be) millions of lives lost and trillions of dollars spent trying to alleviate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. World government and corporate leaders are striving to deal with this pandemic, but uncertainty is felt across the globe. Unprecedented strategies (e.g., the United States government's multi-trillion-dollar stimulus package (s)) have been used to halt the spread of COVID-19. These small events cascade throughout larger and larger systems leading to unforeseeable consequences. Organizations must experiment and make decisions on how to react. Decisions must be made and implemented to see what the effects of these decisions are. The chapters in this volume provide important insights for all organizations during this time of crisis. The chapters express bottomup and top-down approaches to a crisis-initiating environmental change by organizations. The chapters provide insight into the way organizations perceive the effect of COVID-19 as 1) a permanent or transitory change in the organization's environment; and 2) as a crisis or opportunity. Taken together, the chapters provide both scientists and practitioners with a starting point for understanding the impact of COVID-19 on organizational theory and on management practice for readers.

From the author of The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell's international bestseller Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking is a revolution in the understanding of the mind.

An art expert sees a ten-million-dollar sculpture and instantly spots it's a fake. A marriage analyst knows within minutes whether a couple will stay together. A fire-fighter suddenly senses he has to get out of a blazing building. A speed dater clicks with the right person...

This book is all about those moments when we 'know' something without knowing why. Here Malcolm Gladwell explores the phenomenon of 'blink', showing how a snap judgement can be far more effective than a cautious decision. By trusting your instincts, he reveals, you'll never think about thinking in the same way again.

Semiorder is probably one of the most frequently ordered structures in science. It naturally appears in fields like psychometrics, economics, decision sciences, linguistics and archaeology. It explicitly takes into account the inevitable imprecisions of scientific instruments by allowing the replacement of precise numbers by intervals. The purpose of this book is to dissect this structure and to study its fundamental properties. The main subjects treated are the numerical representations of semiorders, the generalizations of the concept to valued relations, the aggregation of semiorders and their basic role in a general theoretical framework for multicriteria decision-aid methods. Audience: This volume is intended for students and researchers in the fields of decision analysis, management science, operations research, discrete mathematics, classification, social choice theory, and order theory, as well as for practitioners in the design of decision tools.

Kindness in Management and Organizational Studies is the first book in a ground-breaking series exploring Kindness at Work. This edited collection offers multiple perspectives in the understanding, interpretation, enactment, and resistance to the concept of kindness in a business context. Through the diverse offerings of each author we gain and reflect on new knowledge, formulate new questions, and find direction for our next steps. The collection of texts range in topics that include Indigenous storytelling about sanctified kindness to an examination of key management theories using ANTi-History to intergenerational stories on kindness and bouncing back. Compassion and kindness, care ethics, and the framing of kindness are also a part of the text. Unbiased compassion and work on the continuing and chronic occupational hazards of sexual harassment and discrimination is presented as well as benevolent sexism and performative kindness. Kindness and communication, Kindness and leadership and a case study of Kindness in the public service are also offerings in this first book on Kindness at Work. Kindness in Management and Organizational Studies is ideal for undergraduate and graduate students in business, leadership, and human resources. It offers illuminating new perspectives and insights to scholars that enables the analyses of leadership and management styles, organizational psychology, and HR practice and theory.

In recent years there has been substantial interest in benefits assessment methods, especially as these methods are used to assess health, safety, and environmental issues. At least part of this interest can be traced to Executive Order 12291, issued by President Ronald Reagan in 1981. This Executive Order requires Federal agencies to perform benefits assessments of pro posed major regulations and prohibits them from taking regulatory action unless potential benefits exceed potential costs to society. Heightened interest in benefits assessment methods has in tum given rise to greater recognition of the inherent difficulties in performing such assess ments. For example, many benefits that are intuitively felt to be most important are also among the most difficult to measure. It can be difficult to identify the full range of both benefits and costs. The choice of an appro priate discount rate for comparing benefits and costs over time is proble matic. Even when benefits are quantifiable in principle and agreement can be reached on their valuation, required d, ata may not be available. Thus considerable uncertainty is built into most benefit estimates, even when they are based on the best available data. In light of the complexities and difficulties associated with the perform ance of a benefits assessment, this book reviews the current state of theoretical and methodological knowledge in the field. The review is extensive in that it covers over fifty years of research, theoretical develop ment, and practice."

The numerous advances in mathematical programming have opened up new insights about sensitivity analysis. The paradigm What if...?' question is no longer the only question of interest. Often, we want to know Why...?' and Why not...?' Such questions were not analyzed in the early years of mathematical programming to the same extent that they are now, and we have not only expanded our thinking about post-optimal analysis', but also about solution analysis', even if the solution obtained is not optimal. Therefore, it is now time to examine all the recent advances on sensitivity analysis and parametric programming. This book combines the origins of sensitivity analysis with the state of the art. It covers much of the traditional approaches with a modern perspective, and shows recent results using the optimal partition approach, stemming from interior methods, for both linear and quadratic programming. It examines the special case of network models. It presents a neglected topic, qualitative sensitivity analysis, as well as elements of mixed integer programming and gives a modern perspective of nonlinear programming. It provides recent advances in multi-criteria mathematical programming and also describes the state-of-the-art in stochastic programming. It covers recent advances in understanding redundancy in quadratic programs, considers an approach to diagnosing infeasibility in linear and nonlinear programs, and gives an overview of sensitivity analysis for fuzzy mathematical programming.

Get to better, more effective strategy.

In nearly every business segment and corner of the world economy, the most successful companies dramatically outperform their rivals. What is their secret? In Better, Simpler Strategy, Harvard Business School professor Felix Oberholzer-Gee shows how these companies achieve more by doing less. At a time when rapid technological change and global competition conspire to upend traditional ways of doing business, these companies pursue radically simplified strategies. At a time when many managers struggle not to drown in vast seas of projects and initiatives, these businesses follow simple rules that help them select the few ideas that truly make a difference.

Better, Simpler Strategy provides readers with a simple tool, the value stick, which every organization can use to make its strategy more effective and easier to execute. Based on proven financial mechanics, the value stick helps executives decide where to focus their attention and how to deepen the competitive advantage of their business.

How does the value stick work? It provides a way of measuring the two fundamental forces that lead to value creation and increased financial success—the customer's willingness-to-pay and the employee's willingness-to-sell their services to the business. Companies that win, Oberholzer-Gee shows, create value for customers by raising their willingness-to-pay, and they provide value for talent by lowering their willingness-to-sell. The approach, proven in practice, is entirely data driven and uniquely suited to be cascaded throughout the organization.

With many useful visuals and examples across industries and geographies, Better, Simpler Strategy explains how these two key measures enable firms to gauge and improve their strategies and operations. Based on the author's sought-after strategy course, this book is your must-have guide for making better strategic decisions.

This book comes out from the materials I used to refer while doing my research on the optimization issues in logistics. I brought together some of these materials to form a guidance material on the fundamentals of the optimization concepts along with my own studies on the application of optimization methods. This book consists of two parts and six chapters. The first part of the book, which consists of three chapters, is about introduction to optimization with typical base problems and algorithms for solving problems. The second part of this book consists of three my own researches on the application of optimization methods. Each chapter in this book is independent of each other. I hope you will find this book useful, informative, beneficial and appropriate for your needs.

How and to what extent do decisions affect business performance? Despite years of study by academic researchers and industry practitioners, there still remains a need to draw a clear and established connection between decision making and performance. By closely examining consequential business decisions made by key executives, this book offers a better understanding of business performance and recommendations for improved business practices. Through the use of case studies and interviews with business leaders based on 17 theorized measures of performance, this breakthrough study not only clarifies the impact of decisions on business performance, but also defines and distinguishes decisions that lead to successful and unsuccessful performance. Recommendations are made to optimize decision making for businesses of all sizes and projections about the future of decision making and performance are provided. This book can be used both as a reference source for academic researchers and students seeking further research on the subject, and as a practical guide for leaders and business professionals seeking advancement and better decision making within the industry.

This book is about understanding feminist theories and feminist economics through a multi-paradigmatic approach. For this purpose, the book starts with a discussion of four most diverse worldviews or paradigms (i.e., functionalist, interpretive, radical humanist, radical structuralist). Then, it discusses six relevant social aspects (i.e., human nature, feminist theories, family, patriarchy, discrimination, feminist economics) from the viewpoints of the four most diverse worldviews or paradigms. Next, the book looks at some of the writings in the feminist theories and feminist economics literature (such as: feminist research, feminist education, economics versus sociology, and men versus women) from the point of view of the multi-paradigmatic approach to gain a better understanding of the differences. The book concludes by recommending paradigm diversity. This book crosses two existing lines of literature: social philosophy and feminism. The book maintains that social theory can usefully be conceived in terms of four broad paradigms: functionalist, interpretive, radical humanist, and radical structuralist. The book emphasizes that the four paradigms are equally scientific and informative; each looks at a given phenomenon from a certain paradigmatic viewpoint. An understanding of different paradigms leads to a broader and balanced understanding of the phenomenon. Overall, the book advocates paradigm diversity.

This book illustrates how to access the right information for making the best decisions during turbulent times. It is written from an experienced-based perspective that is beneficial for those looking for the development and improvement of the decision-making process. The approach is centered on the author's experience in developing and implementing effective and efficient approaches to decision-making in business and government. Based on those experiences, this book provides insights into how to improve the decision making process of your organization, whether it be large or small. For decision makers and those providing market information for making decisions, this book provide guidelines for a framework which includes systems thinking. For those interested in change management and corporate governance, the book presents examples where it was done well and some examples where it was not and the ensuring consequences. Praise for Systems Thinking Decision-Making Process... "This is an absolutely incredible book by a distinguished practitioner. The range of knowledge and experience that Vince Barabba has had is astounding. I urge everyone who is interested in complex, messy problems to read this amazing book." --Ian I. Mitroff "...Vince has masterfully blended the art of organizational respect with the science of data inquiry to drive change and realize strategic vision. A master storyteller, he does not just teach, his book brings his learnings to life in a meaningful way that if carefully listened to, can change the course of a career." -- Paul D'Alessandro Principal, Health Industries, PwC US "In his latest book, Vince Barabba integrates his vast knowledge from 50 years of dedicated work in both the public and private sectors in order to provide leaders with an actionable framework for radically improving how their organizations collect and use information to make the best decisions for all the wicked messes that now appear in our global village... This book can save your company from living in the dark with false assumptions about all your key stakeholders." -- Ralph H. Kilmann, Ph.D. CEO, Kilmann Diagnostics Co-Author, The Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI) "Absorbing just a few of the many smart ideas in this book will make you a better leader and decision maker. Thinking systemically about how the hard-earned lessons from Vince Barabba's brilliant career apply to your enterprise could make you a great one." - Chunka Mui Co-Author, A Brief History of a Perfect Future and Billion Dollar Lessons "...if you are interested in 'thinking in systems,' this book is for you. The 'On Star' story demonstrates to you how the initial product-centered thinking was proselytized to 'thinking in systems'." -- John Pourdehnad Visiting Professor, IESE Business School and Faulty of Systems Leadership, Thomas Jefferson University "In writing Systems Thinking Decision-Making Process: How to Avoid Burnt Toast, Vince Barabba is addressing the limits of knowledge management systems which enable 'organizations as usual' to share best practices on how to scrape toast faster and cheaper... The examples shared by Vince, from his first-hand experiences in corporate America or his services as a marketing consultant, contribute invaluable clarity to his goal of providing a "sketch of an Inquiry Center Learning and Support System" for those with the ambition to lead efforts to work smarter, not harder, firmly against the grain of 'organizations as usual'..." -- Bill Bellows, Ph.D., President, InThinking Services Adjunct Professor, California State University, Northridge and Southern Utah University Advisory Council Member and Former Deputy Director, The W. Edwards Deming Institute (R) "In his 'last book', Vince weaves the experiences and learning of a lifetime into whole cloth of insight and wisdom. He helps us to find relevant information from a rapidly changing world and apply it to making good decisions. This is a masterpiece of knowledge presented in a very entertaining way." -- Carl Spetzler Chairman, Strategic Decisions Group International LLC "This is a truly inspiring and mind changing book directly relevant for our times... Vince has shown through his remarkable work that business and government are a force for good when leaders think long term, work with, not against nature, and use their influence and resources for the many, not the few..." -- Osvald Bjelland Founder and President, Xynteo Founder, The Performance Theatre Foundation

From the author of Expecting Better and The Family Firm, an economist's guide to the early years of parenting. "Both refreshing and useful. With so many parenting theories driving us all a bit batty, this is the type of book that we need to help calm things down." -LA Times "The book is jampacked with information, but it's also a delightful read because Oster is such a good writer." -NPR With Expecting Better, award-winning economist Emily Oster spotted a need in the pregnancy market for advice that gave women the information they needed to make the best decision for their own pregnancies. By digging into the data, Oster found that much of the conventional pregnancy wisdom was wrong. In Cribsheet, she now tackles an even greater challenge: decision-making in the early years of parenting. As any new parent knows, there is an abundance of often-conflicting advice hurled at you from doctors, family, friends, and strangers on the internet. From the earliest days, parents get the message that they must make certain choices around feeding, sleep, and schedule or all will be lost. There's a rule-or three-for everything. But the benefits of these choices can be overstated, and the trade-offs can be profound. How do you make your own best decision? Armed with the data, Oster finds that the conventional wisdom doesn't always hold up. She debunks myths around breastfeeding (not a panacea), sleep training (not so bad!), potty training (wait until they're ready or possibly bribe with M&Ms), language acquisition (early talkers aren't necessarily geniuses), and many other topics. She also shows parents how to think through freighted questions like if and how to go back to work, how to think about toddler discipline, and how to have a relationship and parent at the same time. Economics is the science of decision-making, and Cribsheet is a thinking parent's guide to the chaos and frequent misinformation of the early years. Emily Oster is a trained expert-and mom of two-who can empower us to make better, less fraught decisions-and stay sane in the years before preschool.

1. Introduction to Bayesian Methods in Reliability.- 1. Why Bayesian Methods?.- 1.1 Sparse data.- 1.2 Decision problems.- 2. Bayes' Theorem.- 3. Examples from a Safety Study on Gas transmission Pipelines.- 3.1 Estimating the probability of the development of a big hole.- 3.2 Estimating the leak rate of a gas transmission pipeline.- 4. Conclusions.- References.- 2. An Overview of the Bayesian Approach.- 1. Background.- 2. Probability Concepts.- 3. Notation.- 4. Reliability Concepts and Models.- 5. Forms of Data.- 6. Statistical Problems.- 7. Review of Non-Bayesian Statistical Methods.- 8. Desiderata for Decision-Oriented Statistical Methodology.- 9. Decision-Making.- 10. Degrees of Belief as Probabilities.- 11. Bayesian Statistical Philosophy.- 12. A Simple Illustration of Bayesian Learning.- 13. Bayesian Approaches to Typical Statistical Questions.- 14. Assessment of Prior Densities.- 15. Bayesian Inference for some Univariate Probability Models.- 16. Approximate Analysis under Great Prior Uncertainty.- 17. Problems Involving many Parameters: Empirical Bayes.- 18. Numerical Methods for Practical Bayesian Statistics.- References.- 3. Reliability Modelling and Estimation.- 1. Non-Repairable Systems.- 1.1 Introduction.- 1.2 Describing reliability.- 1.3 Failure time distributions.- 2. Estimation.- 2.1 Introduction.- 2.2 Classical methods.- 2.3 Bayesian methods.- 3. Reliability estimation.- 3.1 Introduction.- 3.2 Binomial sampling.- 3.3 Pascal sampling.- 3.4 Poisson sampling.- 3.5 Hazard rate estimation.- References.- 4. Repairable Systems and Growth Models.- 1. Introduction.- 2. Good as New: the Renewal Process.- 3. Estimation.- 4. The Poisson Process.- 5. Bad as old: the Non-Homogeneous Poisson Process.- 6. Classical Estimation.- 7. Exploratory Analysis.- 8. The Duane Model.- 9. Bayesian Analysis.- References.- 5. The Use of Expert Judgement in Risk Assessment.- 1. Introduction.- 2. Independence Preservation.- 3. The Quality of Experts' Judgement.- 4. Calibration Sets and Seed Variables.- 5. A Classical Model.- 6. Bayesian Models.- 7. Some Experimental Results.- References.- 6. Forecasting Software Reliability.- 1. Introduction.- 2. The Software Reliability Growth Problem.- 3. Some Software Reliability Growth Models.- 3.1 Jelinski and Moranda (JM).- 3.2 Bayesian Jelinski-Moranda (BJM).- 3.3 Littlewood (L).- 3.4 Littlewood and Verrall (LV).- 3.5 Keiller and Littlewood (KL).- 3.6 Weibull order statistics (W).- 3.7 Duane (D).- 3.8 Goel-Okumoto (GO).- 3.9 Littlewood NHPP (LNHPP).- 4. Examples of Use.- 5. Analysis of Predictive Quality.- 5.1 The u-plot.- 5.2 The y-plot, and scatter plot of u's.- 5.3 Measures of 'noise'.- 5.3.1 Braun statistic.- 5.3.2 Median variability.- 5.3.3 Rate variability.- 5.4 Prequential likelihood.- 6. Examples of Predictive Analysis.- 7. Adapting and Combining Predictions; Future Directions.- 8 Summary and Conclusions.- Acknowledgements.- References.- References.- Author index.