Chimpanzees engage in competitive altruism in a triadic ultimatum game.

Partner choice promotes competition among individuals to be selected as a cooperative partner, a phenomenon referred to as competitive altruism. We explored whether chimpanzees engage in competitive altruism in a triadic Ultimatum Game where two proposers can send offers simultaneously or consecutively to a responder who can only accept one of the two competing offers. In a dyadic control condition only one proposer at a time could send an offer to the responder. Chimpanzees increased their offers across trials in the competitive triadic, but not in the dyadic control condition. Chimpanzees also increased their offers after being rejected in previous triadic trials. Furthermore, we found that chimpanzees, under specific conditions, outcompete first proposers in triadic consecutive trials before the responder could choose which offer to accept by offering more than what is expected if they acted randomly or simply offered the smallest possible amount. These results suggest that competitive altruism in chimpanzees did not emerge just as a by-product of them trying to increase over previous losses. Chimpanzees might consider how others' interactions affect their outcomes and engage in strategies to maximize their chances of being selected as cooperative partners.

Strategic social decision making undergoes significant changes in typically developing and autistic early adolescents.

Information sampling about others' trustworthiness prior to cooperation allows humans to minimize the risk of exploitation. Here, we examined whether early adolescence or preadolescence, a stage defined as in between childhood and adolescence, is a significant developmental period for strategic social decisions. We also sought to characterize differences between autistic children and their typically developing (TD) peers. TD (N = 48) and autistic (N = 56) 8- to 12-year-olds played an online information sampling trust game. While both groups adapted their information sampling and cooperation to the various trustworthiness levels of the trustees, groups differed in how age and social skills modulated task behavior. In the TD group social skills were a stronger overall predictor of task behavior. In the autistic group, age was a stronger predictor and interacted with social skills. Computational modeling revealed that both groups used the same heuristic information sampling strategy-albeit older TD children were more efficient as reflected by decreasing decision noise with age. Autistic children had lower prior beliefs about the trustee's trustworthiness compared to TD children. These lower priors indicate that children believed the trustees to be less trustworthy. Lower priors scaled with lower social skills across groups. Notably, groups did not differ in prior uncertainty, meaning that the priors of TD and autistic children were equally strong. Taken together, we found significant development in information sampling and cooperation in early adolescence and nuanced differences between TD and autistic children. Our study highlights the importance of deep phenotyping of children including clinical measures, behavioral experiments and computational modeling. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: We specified how early adolescents with and without an autism diagnosis sampled information about their interaction partners and made cooperation decisions in a strategic game. Early adolescence is a significant developmental period for strategic decision making, marked by significant changes in information sampling efficiency and adaptivity to the partner's behavior. Autistic and non-autistic groups differed in how age and social skills modulated task behavior; in non-autistic children behavior was more indicative of overall social skills. Computational modeling revealed differences between autistic and non-autistic groups in their initial beliefs about cooperation partners; autistic children expected their partners to be less trustworthy.

Beyond Just Talking Strategy: Using Gaming Simulations to Catalyze Airline Managers' Buy-in to Novel Strategies that Can Shape or Adapt to Profit Cyclicality.

This empirical qualitative study explores the role of gaming simulations in catalyzing changes to organization-wide management's perspectives on a novel strategy for aircraft orders and retirements. A large US airline developed the new strategy to tackle the pervasive problem of profit cyclicality, driving poor average profit performance across the cycle. Based on the dynamic model used to develop the strategy with senior management, a gaming simulation workshop was designed and delivered in groups of 20 to over 200 organization-wide managers. They tested various strategies for aircraft orders and retirements, under scenarios for market demand and conduct for competitors and regulators. A qualitative methodology was used to capture the workshop participants' perspectives on the efficacy of various capacity strategies, before, during and after the workshop. The findings are that managers experiment risk-free with innovations in strategies for capacity orders and retirements and they do indeed discover for themselves that there are counterintuitive alternatives that can achieve large and stable profitable growth. These strategies depend on competitors (role-played by workshops participants in the simulation) cooperating to create a win-win equilibrium. Performance far exceeds the industry benchmark profit cycle. The contribution is the empirical evidence of the effectiveness of gaming simulations to catalyze managers' shared beliefs and buy-in to a new strategy or business model. There are implications for practitioners in airlines and other sectors on the use of a gaming simulation workshop toolset, to help create such buy-in for an emerging strategy or business model. Protocols for best practice gaming simulation workshop design are discussed.

Management of knowledge and competence through human resource information system-A structured review.

The fourth industrial revolution will be ushered in by future high technology, and as a result, the world will face new difficulties relating to people, the environment, and profitability. Accordingly, the competitive edge and long-term viability of businesses would depend on the knowledge workers who could overcome these excruciatingly difficult obstacles and have the knowledge and competency to influence the overall performance of any type of company. But managing knowledge workers falls under the purview of human resources, and only effective human resources tools, plans, and procedures can ensure the success of this task. One such tool, which has the capacity and capability to change the whole scenario in an organization's favor, is the human resource information system (HRIS). The purpose of this structured review is to provide insight into a field of HRM (i.e., HRIS) that has largely been neglected by other reviews of the literature and has only been briefly discussed by a small number of publications published in reputable, top-tier journals. A customized HRIS framework is the result of this structured literature review for managing knowledge and competence. The study presents the content analysis of 48 articles, systematically and purposefully selected for this literature review, published during the past three decades. The study has several implications for policymakers and HR practitioners.

Identifying the factors affecting strategic decision-making ability to boost the entrepreneurial performance: A hybrid structural equation modeling - artificial neural network approach.

This study builds a conceptual model of strategic decision-making ability that leads to entrepreneurial performance (EP) based on the two-system decision-making theory and logical analysis. An empirical approach using structural equation modeling - artificial neural network (SEM-ANN) was performed to describe the linear and nonlinear relationships in the proposed model. The empirical results reveal that strategic decision-making abilities are affected by five factors: attention, memory, thinking, emotion, and sentiment, and whose influence mechanisms and degrees are varied. Results also describe that these abilities have a positive effect on overall EP. Therefore, results suggest that businesses' strategic decision-making is usually strengthened when entrepreneurs have a clear understanding of these influencing elements, and the interaction between them leads to improved performance.

Participatory Systems Modelling for Youth Mental Health: An Evaluation Study Applying a Comprehensive Multi-Scale Framework.

The youth mental health sector is persistently challenged by issues such as service fragmentation and inefficient resource allocation. Systems modelling and simulation, particularly utilizing participatory approaches, is offering promise in supporting evidence-informed decision making with limited resources by testing alternative strategies in safe virtual environments before implementing them in the real world. However, improved evaluation efforts are needed to understand the critical elements involved in and to improve methods for implementing participatory modelling for youth mental health system and service delivery. An evaluation protocol is described to evaluate the feasibility, value, impact, and sustainability of participatory systems modelling in delivering advanced decision support capabilities for youth mental health. This study applies a comprehensive multi-scale evaluation framework, drawing on participatory action research principles as well as formative, summative, process, and outcome evaluation techniques. Novel data collection procedures are presented, including online surveys that incorporate gamification to enable social network analysis and patient journey mapping. The evaluation approach also explores the experiences of diverse stakeholders, including young people with lived (or living) experience of mental illness. Social and technical opportunities will be uncovered, as well as challenges implementing these interdisciplinary methods in complex settings to improve youth mental health policy, planning, and outcomes. This study protocol can also be adapted for broader international applications, disciplines, and contexts.

Responsiveness and Adaptability of Healthcare Facilities in Emergency Scenarios: COVID-19 Experience.

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed many vulnerabilities of the contemporary built environment along with limited preparedness and low efficiency in mitigating unexpected and unprecedented challenges. This article discusses the efficiency and responsiveness of basic hospital spatial layouts in three different scenarios: normal operation; the segregation of a large number of patients and still providing them with access to emergency healthcare, typical for a pandemic; and a sudden, extremely high number of admissions typical for compound disasters and terrorist attacks. A set of parameters and a method for general adaptability assessment (GAAT) that can be used as a tool in decision-making processes as well as evaluation of both existing facilities and the new models for resilient hospitals resulting from the experience of the pandemic are proposed. The paper emphasizes why factors among which adaptability, convertibility, and scalability should be at the very core of hospital development and management strategies. It also discusses new models of adaptable healthcare facilities that enable day-to-day operations to continue alongside a pandemic, and other emergency scenarios.

Complex scenarios with competing factors: A conception paper applied to the COVID-19 case.

A theory to analyze complex scenarios facing threats with competing factors and limited resources has been introduced. The scenarios are modeled as closed systems. Hamilton's principle of stationary action is used to conceive a theory in which competing factors dispute available resources to minimize undesirable outcomes. The result indicates that the minimum response is obtained by a combination of the competing factors weighted by their corresponding criticalities. The theory has been applied to the COVID-19 pandemic with two competing factors: Health and Economy. As main result, to minimize the total number of deaths, the recommendation is to balance the emphasis on both factors. This implies to give more emphasis to the economic factor, by avoiding restrict interventions like lockdowns and business closures. The model may evolve from a qualitative to a quantitative status, allowing for computational simulations aimed at validations and forecasting. As such, this approach may become a useful tool for strategic decision-making regarding resources allocations to reduce guessing in scenarios full of uncertainties.

Intuition as Emergence: Bridging Psychology, Philosophy and Organizational Science.

Accelerating environmental uncertainty and the need to cope with increasingly complex market and social demands, combine to create high value for the intuitive approach to decision-making at the strategic level. Research on intuition suffers from marked fragmentation, due to the existence of disciplinary silos based on diverse, apparently irreconcilable, ontological and epistemological assumptions. Not surprisingly, there is no integrated interdisciplinary framework suitable for a rich account of intuition, contemplating how affect and cognition intertwine in the intuitive process, and how intuition scales up from the individual to collective decision-making. This study contributes to the construction of a broad conceptual framework, suitable for a multi-level account of intuition and for a fruitful dialogue with distant research areas. It critically discusses two mainstream conceptualizations of intuition which claim to be grounded in a cross-disciplinary consensus. Drawing on the complexity paradigm, it then proposes a conceptualization of intuition as emergence. Finally, it explores the theoretical and practical implications.

S-MEDUTA: Combining Balanced Scorecard with Simulation and MCDA Techniques for the Evaluation of the Strategic Performance of an Emergency Department.

The scope of this paper is to propose a new integrated methodology for the evaluation of the strategic performance of a healthcare organization. In order to find the optimal strategy for an emergency department, we propose the combination of BSC, simulation, and UTASTAR algorithm. Through the simulation model, the stakeholders have the ability to evaluate the effect of their decisions on a number of KPIs that are important for the successful implementation of strategy on the ED. This method is able to provide a set of completed results (e.g., scores, weights, value functions, etc.), which may help the organization to evaluate and revise its strategy.

Tomada de decisão em hospitais de ensino: entre formalismo e síntese intuitiva / Toma de decisión en hospitales universitarios: entre formalismo y síntesis intuitiva / Decision-making in teaching hospitals: between formalism and intuitive synthesis

Resumo Este estudo de caso múltiplo teve por objetivo analisar como o middle manager (MM), a partir de seus papéis estratégicos, associa as decisões racionais e intuitivas no processo de tomada de decisão estratégica (TDE) em hospitais públicos de ensino (HPE). Os dados foram coletados por meio de entrevista e análise de documentos. A análise de dados ocorreu considerando os elementos constitutivos: racionalidade; síntese intuitiva; e middle manager. Constatamos que, quando o MM articula com o topo da organização, assume os papéis de defensor e sintetizador, aflorando as decisões racionais. Quando articula com a base, desempenha os papéis de facilitador e implementador, emergindo as decisões intuitivas. Como contribuição, apresentamos as dimensões objetivas e (inter)subjetivas no processo de TDE, evidenciando a complexidade dos papéis estratégicos do MM em situações deliberadas e emergentes nos HPE.

Resumen Este estudio de caso múltiple tuvo como objetivo analizar cómo el middle manager (MM), a partir de sus papeles estratégicos, asocia las decisiones racionales e intuitivas en el proceso de toma de decisión estratégica (TDE) en hospitales públicos universitarios (HPU). Los datos se recolectaron a través de entrevistas y análisis de documentos. El análisis de datos consideró los elementos constitutivos: racionalidad, síntesis intuitiva y middle manager. Se constató que cuando el MM articula con la cima de la organización asume los papeles de defensor y sintetizador y afloran decisiones racionales. Cuando articula con la base desempeña los papeles de facilitador e implementador y emergen decisiones intuitivas. Como contribución, se presentan las dimensiones objetivas e intersubjetivas en el proceso de TDE, lo que evidencia la complejidad de los roles estratégicos del MM en situaciones deliberadas y emergentes en los HPU.

Abstract This multiple-case study analyzes how middle managers (MM), from their strategic roles, associate rational and intuitive decisions in the strategic decision-making process (SDM) in public teaching hospitals (PTH). Data was collected through interview and document analysis. Data analysis occurred through constitutive elements of analysis: rationality, intuitive synthesis, and middle managers. The research found that, when articulating with the organization's upper management, the MM takes the roles of synthesizing information and championing alternatives, emphasizing rational decisions. When articulating with the lower-level management, the MM plays the roles of facilitating and implementing deliberate strategy, emphasizing intuitive decisions. As a contribution to the field, the study presents the objective and inter-subjective dimensions in the SDM process, evidencing the complexity of the strategic roles of the MM in deliberate and emergent situations in PTH.

Saliency modulates behavioral strategies in response to social comparison.

Social comparison has been found to affect humans in many aspects including outcome evaluation, emotional reaction, and decision-making. Here, two experiments were conducted using a gambling task involving monetary gains and losses (absolute outcome: win/loss), whereby participants' outcome was either better or worse than the outcome of a paired player (relative outcome: better/worse). The results of experiment 1 showed that participants switched more frequently after absolute losses compared with absolute gains, consistent with previous studies showing a win-stay lose-shift heuristic in repeated decision-making. Participants also adopted a better-stay worse-switch strategy where they switched more often after worse outcomes than better outcomes when compared with others, demonstrating that the win-stay lose-shift rule is extended to social comparison situations. In Experiment 2, through manipulating visual saliency, we replicated these findings and further demonstrated that decision making is influenced by emphasizing either the absolute (gain/loss) or relative (better/worse) aspect of the outcomes. Our research indicates that attentional modulation of information orchestrates social comparison, possibly by changing how each aspect of the information is weighted. These findings reinforce the idea that attention influences higher-level decision making by changing the weighting of each decisional dimension.

The BCD of response time analysis in experimental economics.

For decisions in the wild, time is of the essence. Available decision time is often cut short through natural or artificial constraints, or is impinged upon by the opportunity cost of time. Experimental economists have only recently begun to conduct experiments with time constraints and to analyze response time (RT) data, in contrast to experimental psychologists. RT analysis has proven valuable for the identification of individual and strategic decision processes including identification of social preferences in the latter case, model comparison/selection, and the investigation of heuristics that combine speed and performance by exploiting environmental regularities. Here we focus on the benefits, challenges, and desiderata of RT analysis in strategic decision making. We argue that unlocking the potential of RT analysis requires the adoption of process-based models instead of outcome-based models, and discuss how RT in the wild can be captured by time-constrained experiments in the lab. We conclude that RT analysis holds considerable potential for experimental economics, deserves greater attention as a methodological tool, and promises important insights on strategic decision making in naturally occurring environments.

Involving citizens in priority setting for public health research: Implementation in infection research.

BACKGROUND: Public sources fund the majority of UK infection research, but citizens currently have no formal role in resource allocation. To explore the feasibility and willingness of citizens to engage in strategic decision making, we developed and tested a practical tool to capture public priorities for research. METHOD: A scenario including six infection themes for funding was developed to assess citizen priorities for research funding. This was tested over two days at a university public festival. Votes were cast anonymously along with rationale for selection. The scenario was then implemented during a three-hour focus group exploring views on engagement in strategic decisions and in-depth evaluation of the tool. RESULTS: 188/491(38%) prioritized funding research into drug-resistant infections followed by emerging infections(18%). Results were similar between both days. Focus groups contained a total of 20 citizens with an equal gender split, range of ethnicities and ages ranging from 18 to >70 years. The tool was perceived as clear with participants able to make informed comparisons. Rationale for funding choices provided by voters and focus group participants are grouped into three major themes: (i) Information processing; (ii) Knowledge of the problem; (iii) Responsibility; and a unique theme within the focus groups (iv) The potential role of citizens in decision making. Divergent perceptions of relevance and confidence of "non-experts" as decision makers were expressed. CONCLUSION: Voting scenarios can be used to collect, en-masse, citizens' choices and rationale for research priorities. Ensuring adequate levels of citizen information and confidence is important to allow deployment in other formats.

Strategic Decision-Making Learning from Label Distributions: An Approach for Facial Age Estimation.

Nowadays, label distribution learning is among the state-of-the-art methodologies in facial age estimation. It takes the age of each facial image instance as a label distribution with a series of age labels rather than the single chronological age label that is commonly used. However, this methodology is deficient in its simple decision-making criterion: the final predicted age is only selected at the one with maximum description degree. In many cases, different age labels may have very similar description degrees. Consequently, blindly deciding the estimated age by virtue of the highest description degree would miss or neglect other valuable age labels that may contribute a lot to the final predicted age. In this paper, we propose a strategic decision-making label distribution learning algorithm (SDM-LDL) with a series of strategies specialized for different types of age label distribution. Experimental results from the most popular aging face database, FG-NET, show the superiority and validity of all the proposed strategic decision-making learning algorithms over the existing label distribution learning and other single-label learning algorithms for facial age estimation. The inner properties of SDM-LDL are further explored with more advantages.

Gestión documental, de información, del conocimiento e inteligencia organizacional: particularidades y convergencia para la toma de decisiones estratégicas / Record, information and knowledge management and organizational intelligence: distinguishing features and convergence in strategic decision making

El objetivo de este trabajo es identificar los elementos, procesos y sistemas de información relacionados con la gestión documental, la gestión de información, la inteligencia organizacional y la gestión del conocimiento que inciden en la toma de decisiones estratégicas de instituciones de información. Se utilizó el análisis documental para examinar los componentes y características particulares de cada uno de estos procesos gerenciales y el modo en que inciden en los máximos niveles de decisión organizacional de las instituciones de información. Se realizó un análisis descriptivo para esclarecer y precisar los recursos, los procesos y los sistemas informacionales que intervienen en la toma de decisiones estratégicas de bibliotecas, archivos y centros de información de amplio reconocimiento para el sector de las Ciencias de la Información en Cuba. Los documentos archivísticos, la información organizacional interna y externa y el conocimiento constituyen recursos clave para la toma de decisiones estratégicas. Entre los componentes asociados a estos procesos gerenciales se destacan los sistemas de gestión documental y los sistemas de información organizacional. Los procesos informacionales y cognitivos que inciden en la toma de decisiones son la identificación de necesidades de información y los flujos informativos, la búsqueda y selección de información, al análisis, así como la creación y uso de conocimiento organizacional. La toma de decisiones ha adquirido una marcada dependencia hacia los procesos gerenciales relacionados con la información y el conocimiento; de ahí su carácter informacional, por lo que se requiere una adecuada proyección e interrelación de estos para garantizar decisiones efectivas sobre la base de un buen uso de estos recursos estratégicos(AU)

The study is aimed at identifying the information systems, elements and processes related to record, information and knowledge management and organizational intelligence which influence strategic decision making at information institutions. Document analysis was used to examine the particular characteristics and components of each of these management processes, as well as their influence on the top levels of organizational decision making at information institutions. A descriptive analysis was performed to clarify and accurately determine the information systems, resources and processes involved in strategic decision making at libraries, archives and information centers of broad recognition in the sector of information sciences in Cuba. Archival documents, internal and external organizational information, and knowledge are key resources in strategic decision making. Document management and organizational information systems stand out among the components associated to these management processes. The information and cognitive processes influencing decision making are the identification of information needs and information flows, the search for and selection of information, and the creation, analysis and use of organizational knowledge. Decision making has become heavily dependent on management processes related to information and knowledge, hence its informational nature. Therefore, these strategic resources should be appropriately projected and interrelated to ensure the effectiveness of decisions(AU)

Gestión documental, de información, del conocimiento e inteligencia organizacional: particularidades y convergencia para la toma de decisiones estratégicas / Record, information and knowledge management and organizational intelligence: distinguishing features and convergence in strategic decision making

El objetivo de este trabajo es identificar los elementos, procesos y sistemas de información relacionados con la gestión documental, la gestión de información, la inteligencia organizacional y la gestión del conocimiento que inciden en la toma de decisiones estratégicas de instituciones de información. Se utilizó el análisis documental para examinar los componentes y características particulares de cada uno de estos procesos gerenciales y el modo en que inciden en los máximos niveles de decisión organizacional de las instituciones de información. Se realizó un análisis descriptivo para esclarecer y precisar los recursos, los procesos y los sistemas informacionales que intervienen en la toma de decisiones estratégicas de bibliotecas, archivos y centros de información de amplio reconocimiento para el sector de las Ciencias de la Información en Cuba. Los documentos archivísticos, la información organizacional interna y externa y el conocimiento constituyen recursos clave para la toma de decisiones estratégicas. Entre los componentes asociados a estos procesos gerenciales se destacan los sistemas de gestión documental y los sistemas de información organizacional. Los procesos informacionales y cognitivos que inciden en la toma de decisiones son la identificación de necesidades de información y los flujos informativos, la búsqueda y selección de información, al análisis, así como la creación y uso de conocimiento organizacional. La toma de decisiones ha adquirido una marcada dependencia hacia los procesos gerenciales relacionados con la información y el conocimiento; de ahí su carácter informacional, por lo que se requiere una adecuada proyección e interrelación de estos para garantizar decisiones efectivas sobre la base de un buen uso de estos recursos estratégicos.

The study is aimed at identifying the information systems, elements and processes related to record, information and knowledge management and organizational intelligence which influence strategic decision making at information institutions. Document analysis was used to examine the particular characteristics and components of each of these management processes, as well as their influence on the top levels of organizational decision making at information institutions. A descriptive analysis was performed to clarify and accurately determine the information systems, resources and processes involved in strategic decision making at libraries, archives and information centers of broad recognition in the sector of information sciences in Cuba. Archival documents, internal and external organizational information, and knowledge are key resources in strategic decision making. Document management and organizational information systems stand out among the components associated to these management processes. The information and cognitive processes influencing decision making are the identification of information needs and information flows, the search for and selection of information, and the creation, analysis and use of organizational knowledge. Decision making has become heavily dependent on management processes related to information and knowledge, hence its informational nature. Therefore, these strategic resources should be appropriately projected and interrelated to ensure the effectiveness of decisions.

Integrating horizon scanning and strategic risk prioritisation using a weight of evidence framework to inform policy decisions.

Poor connection between data on emerging issues and credible policy decisions continues to challenge governments, and is only likely to grow as demands on time and resources increase. Here we summarise recent efforts to integrate horizon scanning and risk prioritisation approaches to better connect emerging issues to the political discourse on environmental and food-related issues. Our categorisation of insights including potential future risks and opportunities to inform policy discussions has emerged from a structured three-year programme of horizon scanning for a UK pan-governmental futures partnership led by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). Our efforts to integrate horizon scanning and risk prioritisation, utilising a qualitative weight of evidence framework, has created a systematic process for identifying all signals of potential future change with significant impact for the strategic mission and underlying values of policy actors. Our approach encourages an exploration of factors out of the control of organisations, recognising that resilience depends on the flexibility of management strategies and the preparedness to deal with a variety of unexpected outcomes. We discuss how this approach addresses key cultural and evaluative challenges that policy actors have had in embedding horizon scanning in evidence-based policy processes, and suggest further developments to build confidence in the use of horizon scanning for strategic planning.