Economic framework for information systems

information systems;microeconomics;computers

Satisficing: A Decision-Making Strategy For School Choice

The purpose of this study was to investigate parent decision-making regarding school choice. Data were collected through a survey on how parents approached the decision making task of choosing a school for their child. Parents of kindergarten and first grade students in one public school district in Minnesota and five private schools in surrounding communities were invited to participate. Four bodies of literature provide the theoretical basis of the study. They are education reform; school choice in Minnesota; factors parents consider when choosing schools; and decision-making theory. Satisficing, a concept drawn from Herbert Simon\u27s (1955, 1956) theory of bounded rationality became a key variable in the study. The Maximization Scale short (Nenkov, Morrin, Ward, Schwartz, & Hulland, 2008) was used to identify individuals who maximize, or continually look for the absolute best options in decision-making. Satisficers, in contrast, accept the first best option. The first research question addressed the relationship between the decision-making process parents use to select a school for their children, and the choice they make regarding the school in which they enroll their student(s). Chi-square analysis found a significant difference (X2 = 11.182, df = 4, p \u3c .02) between maximizers and satisficers in regard to the number of schools parents considered before choosing a school. However, there was no significant difference between maximizers and satisficers in the rates at which they enroll their children in schools outside of neighborhood schools. While maximizers considered more school options, these considerations did not translate into leaving the neighborhood school. The second research question examined whether or not there was a difference between parents of first grade students classified as satisficers and those classified as maximizers when asked how satisfied they were with their children\u27s kindergarten. The Chi Square analysis found no statistically significant difference; the satisfaction rates were similar for both maximizers and satisficers. Ninety-one percent (n = 40) of first grade students attended the same school for first grade as they did for kindergarten

Dynamic temporary blood facility location-allocation during and post-disaster periods

The key objective of this study is to develop a tool (hybridization or integration of different techniques) for locating the temporary blood banks during and post-disaster conditions that could serve the hospitals with minimum response time. We have used temporary blood centers, which must be located in such a way that it is able to serve the demand of hospitals in nearby region within a shorter duration. We are locating the temporary blood centres for which we are minimizing the maximum distance with hospitals. We have used Tabu search heuristic method to calculate the optimal number of temporary blood centres considering cost components. In addition, we employ Bayesian belief network to prioritize the factors for locating the temporary blood facilities. Workability of our model and methodology is illustrated using a case study including blood centres and hospitals surrounding Jamshedpur city. Our results shows that at-least 6 temporary blood facilities are required to satisfy the demand of blood during and post-disaster periods in Jamshedpur. The results also show that that past disaster conditions, response time and convenience for access are the most important factors for locating the temporary blood facilities during and post-disaster periods

Recruiting IT Faculty

The current shortage of qualified IT professionals in industry now extends to academia. Academic departments need a systematic approach to recruit new IT faculty effectively. This process is hindered not only by the shortage of formally qualified PhDs, but also by the lack of consensus in the definition of IT and the competition with industry for skilled professionals, even at the PhD level. Another challenge is the gap between new PhDs seeking research positions and the shortage of qualified faculty in institutions for which teaching is a priority. This tutorial explores these and other issues related to IT faculty recruiting, and provides a systematic and practical methodology for pro-actively attracting the right people to the right places in academia. An effective recruiting process requires thoughtful problem definition, identification of appropriate sources of alternatives, consistency and fairness in selection using well-defined criteria, and aggressive closure

Strategic and operational outsourcing : decisions in the pharmaceutical industry

In this paper, we develop a framework of outsoucing research by providing a distictive view on the (recent) outsourcing literature

Land Use Change and Economic Opportunity in Amazonia: An Agent-based Model

Economic changes such as rising açaí prices and the availability of off-farm employment are transforming the landscape of the Amazonian várzea, subject to decision-making at the farming household level. Land use change results from complex human-environment interactions which can be addressed by an agent-based model. An agent-based model is a simulation model composed of autonomous interacting entities known as agents, built from the bottom-up. Coupled with cellular automata, which forms the agents’ environment, agent-based models are becoming an important tool of land use science, complementing traditional methods of induction and deduction. The decision-making methods employed by agent-based models in recent years have included optimization, imitation, heuristics, classifier systems and genetic algorithms, among others, but multiple methods have rarely been comparatively analyzed. A modular agent-based model is designed to allow the researcher to substitute alternative decision-making methods. For a smallholder farming community in Marajó Island near Ponta de Pedras, Pará, Brazil, 21 households are simulated over a 40-year period. In three major scenarios of increasing complexity, these households first face an environment where goods sell at a constant price throughout the simulated period and there are no outside employment opportunities. This is followed by a scenario of variable prices based on empirical data. The third scenario combines variable prices with limited employment opportunities, creating multi-sited households as members emigrate. In each scenario, populations of optimizing agents and heuristic agents are analyzed in parallel. While optimizing agents allocate land cells to maximize revenue using linear programming, fast and frugal heuristic agents use decision trees to quickly pare down feasible solutions and probabilistically select between alternatives weighted by expected revenue. Using distributed computing, the model is run through several parameter sweeps and results are recorded to a cenral database. Land use trajectories and sensitivity analyses highlight the relative biases of each decision-making method and illustrate cases where alternative methods lead to significantly divergent outcomes. A hybrid approach is recommended, employing alternative decision-making methods in parallel to illustrate inefficiencies exogenous and endogenous to the decision-maker, or allowing agents to select among multiple methods to mitigate bias and best represent their real-world analogues

Non-standard workweek scheduling technique selection

This thesis presents a description of non-standard work scheduling techniques and a comparison method which enables decision-makers to differentiate between available work-scheduling alternatives with the purpose in mind of selecting the most appropriate and suitable arrangement. The method developed calls for the decision-maker to follow a five-step sequential process to obtain final results. The ingredients necessary to achieve such final results are obtained in a manner similar to that demanded by decision-making-under-uncertainty conditions commonly followed in actual industrial settings. Since the primary objective of business management is the achievement of a profit through the manipulation of available resources, initial sections of the thesis define the term profit from both an economic and a social viewpoint. Further, the executive decision-maker is urged to look upon individual workers and the management of these worker\u27s time as a vital resource factor playing a substantial role in the degree of ultimate profit generated. The presentation then leads to a discussion of forces involved in the maximized use of the time resource, and eventually to a thorough descriptive evaluation of available non-standard work scheduling techniques which in turn provides the basis for the application of a detailed systematic evaluation procedure and method. Those general concepts involved in the systematic analysis of presented alternatives would in most instances be applicable to general decision-making tasks where a number of different and distinct alternatives existed. This type of analysis technique was employed as it was found that the work-scheduling techniques explored were multivariable, i.e. they were not uniformly beneficial when applied under different criteria conditions potentially selectable by the decision-maker. In addition, this technique allows the decision-maker to incorporate personal knowledge and feelings systematically to reach a final decision. Finally, the thesis guides the decision-maker by forthrightly stating that an appropriate decision-choice rule should be employed at the termination of the analysis procedure. As an aid in this regard, various possible decision-choice rules are presented for consideration. Information on work scheduling alternatives was taken from current literature. This information was blended with the author\u27s general knowledge of business operations and management problem-solving methods, supported by Engineering Management reference texts, to form results which delineate a conclusive decision-making means for profitable work-schedule alternative selection