Political Leadership and Management of Civic Services in a Downturn Economy

Municipal leaders in the United States face difficult decisions when prioritizing nonmandated civic projects for funding, especially when operating budgets are restricted. This phenomenological study investigated municipal leaders\u27 decision-making processes in a state in the southern United States, using a conceptual framework based on rational choice theory, bounded rationality, and group decision-making theory. It specifically explored personal and organizational decision-making processes related to the prioritization and funding of nonmandated civic projects via in-depth interviews with a convenience sample of 15 municipal leaders. Thematic analysis identified expert opinions, the time and cost to complete a project, the perceived value relative to expense, and the availability of additional funding sources as themes important to understanding participants\u27 decision-making processes. Organizational factors that were important in these decisions included the need for clearly defined responsibilities and consistency in funding decisions. No clearly defined organizational processes were in place in any of the participants\u27 municipalities, and the participants noted that areas such as infrastructure improvements, traffic congestion, community involvement, and formal processes in their municipalities were in need of improvement. Positive social change can flow from greater governmental transparency through municipal decision makers\u27 adoption of systematic decision-making systems and processes. Positive social change can also result from greater inclusiveness through increased public outreach efforts. Results add to the research base by contributing to a better theoretical understanding of organizational decision-making processes in the municipal context

The use of expert systems for decision making in organizations

The research described in this thesis investigates three issues related to the use of expert systems for decision making in organizations. These are the effectiveness of ESs when used in different roles, to replace a human decision maker or to advise a human decision maker, the users' behaviourand opinions towards using an expertadvisory system and, the possibility of organization-wide deployment of expert systems and the role of an ES in different organizational levels. The research was based on the development of expert systems within a business game environment, a simulation of a manufacturing company. This was chosen to give more control over the `experiments' than would be possible in a real organization. An expert system (EXGAME) was developed based on a structure derived from Anthony's three levels of decision making to manage the simulated company in the business game itself with little user intervention. On the basis of EXGAME, an expert advisory system (ADGAME) was built to help game players to make better decisions in managing the game company. EXGAME and ADGAME are thus two expert systems in the same domain performing different roles; it was found that ADGAME had, in places, to be different from EXGAME, not simply an extension of it. EXGAME was tested several times against human rivals and was evaluated by measuring its performance. ADGAME was also tested by different users and was assessed by measuring the users' performance and analysing their opinions towards it as a helpful decision making aid. The results showed that an expert system was able to replace a human at the operational level, but had difficulty at the strategic level. It also showed the success of the organization-wide deployment of expert systems in this simulated company

ON THE PLAUSIBILITY AND SCOPE OF EXPERT SYSTEMS IN MANAGEMENT

Over the last decade there have been several efforts at building knowledge based "expert systemsâ, mostly in the scientific and medical arenas. Despite the fact that almost all such systems are in their experimental stages, designers are optimistic about their eventual success. In the last few years, there have been many references to the possibility of expert systems in the management literature. However, what is lacking is a clear theoretical perspective on how various management problems differ in nature from problems in other domains, and the implications of these differences for knowledge based decision support systems for management. In this paper, I examine some of these differences, what they suggest in terms of the functionality that a computer based system must have in order to support organizational decision making, and the scope of such a system as a decision aid. The discussion is grounded in the context of a computer based system called PLANET that exhibits some of the desired functionality.Information Systems Working Papers Serie

The Role of Marketing Information Systems on Business Firms Competitiveness: Integrated Review Paper from Business Perspective

This review paper point out the role of management information Systems in businesses firms competitive advantage from business perspective. Currently, information systems and technologies are a imperative components of successful and competitive businesses. Information technologies consists of Internet-based information systems are playing a vital and expanding role in enhancing firms economic growth.The experience of organizations' managers needs to be provided with the necessary information to reduce risks and make the most appropriate decisions. Thus, firms turn to information systems for the provision of information as firms asset which supplements decision making and performance of business.For the last three decades, different types of information systems are emerged for different intention, depending on the need of the business firms. In today’s very competitive business world, there are various information systems are emerged such as transaction processing systems (TPS), office automation systems (OAS), managerial information systems (MIS), decision support systems (DSS), and executive information systems (EIS), Expert System (ES) and others that supports decision making at different levels of management. In addition to this, there are several functional business systems which enables functional areas managers to make right decision and support business operation in functional areas of business (marketing, manufacturing and production, human resource, accounting) and cross functional business information livelihood information-processing and decision-making needs of several departments such as Supply chain management systems (SCM), customer relationship management systems (CRM), enterprise resource planning systems (ERP). Each information systems, functional and cross functional systems plays a different role in organizational hierarchy and management operations. To purpose of this review, reviewer collected different information related with marketing/management information system that supports business decision making and enhances firms competitiveness. This review paper study endeavors to explain the role information systems in business organizations competitiveness. Keywords: Business Organ0i0 zation, Competitiveness, Strategic advantage, Information Systems. DOI: 10.7176/JMCR/72-01 Publication date:October 31st 202

A Method for Expert Systems Valuation

Many large organizations are now using Expert Systems (ES) to enhance their global and domestic competitive position. Introducing an ES requires a significant commitment of organizational resources. Therefore a means of justifying its value is paramount to making a prudent ES investment decision. Most ESs are typified by numerous intangible benefits and costs. Traditional cost benefit approaches to evaluation are unable to account for the contribution of intangible benefits to the value of an evolving ES project. This paper presents and applies a method which overcomes this problem by utilizing a scoring approach to ES valuatio

Human-Intelligence and Machine-Intelligence Decision Governance Formal Ontology

Since the beginning of the human race, decision making and rational thinking played a pivotal role for mankind to either exist and succeed or fail and become extinct. Self-awareness, cognitive thinking, creativity, and emotional magnitude allowed us to advance civilization and to take further steps toward achieving previously unreachable goals. From the invention of wheels to rockets and telegraph to satellite, all technological ventures went through many upgrades and updates. Recently, increasing computer CPU power and memory capacity contributed to smarter and faster computing appliances that, in turn, have accelerated the integration into and use of artificial intelligence (AI) in organizational processes and everyday life. Artificial intelligence can now be found in a wide range of organizational systems including healthcare and medical diagnosis, automated stock trading, robotic production, telecommunications, space explorations, and homeland security. Self-driving cars and drones are just the latest extensions of AI. This thrust of AI into organizations and daily life rests on the AI community’s unstated assumption of its ability to completely replicate human learning and intelligence in AI. Unfortunately, even today the AI community is not close to completely coding and emulating human intelligence into machines. Despite the revolution of digital and technology in the applications level, there has been little to no research in addressing the question of decision making governance in human-intelligent and machine-intelligent (HI-MI) systems. There also exists no foundational, core reference, or domain ontologies for HI-MI decision governance systems. Further, in absence of an expert reference base or body of knowledge (BoK) integrated with an ontological framework, decision makers must rely on best practices or standards that differ from organization to organization and government to government, contributing to systems failure in complex mission critical situations. It is still debatable whether and when human or machine decision capacity should govern or when a joint human-intelligence and machine-intelligence (HI-MI) decision capacity is required in any given decision situation. To address this deficiency, this research establishes a formal, top level foundational ontology of HI-MI decision governance in parallel with a grounded theory based body of knowledge which forms the theoretical foundation of a systemic HI-MI decision governance framework

Organization support for cloud computing implementation success in education system: scale development and validity in Delphi

Cloud computing (CC) support for learning systems has been viewed as one of the most discussed issues that promise to modernize computing by providing visualized resources as a service over the internet. To be stable in cloud computing acquisition requires an education institution to address many of the same concerns they face in implementing an Information System (IS) service. Currently, there is still lack of CC implementation standard and organizational support that impacted VLE system performance. Previous research has reported that the influence of the CC implementation decision depends on the impact of various factors studied. Nonetheless, organizational support is the least factor mentioned especially studies from Malaysia. Thus, the main purpose of this study is to develop a validated scale of organizational support in implementation decision activities towards CC implementation success. In this paper, the Delphi process adopted to measure consensus among nominal group technique (also known as the expert panel). Key methodological issues in using the methods are discussed, along with the distinct contribution of consensus methods as aids to decision making in education service development. The study has adapted stages of proses flow of scale development and validation of measurement items according to legitimate measures in the Delphi technique. The measurement scales formed are based on literature review and field studies conducted to increase the reliability and validity values. Organizational support constructs were divided into top management support, firm size, awareness, Technology Readiness and cost effectiveness. A total of 5 items have been successfully set up for further validatio

FUZZY MODELLING OF THE ACADEMIC STAFF ATTESTATION PROCESS

A large class of real-world problems, arising in the administrative - organizational systems is connected with the attestation of the academic staff in accordance with predefined and linguistically described evaluation criteria. Such problems are solved in the circumstances of uncertainties of different types. The process of interpretation goes together with some ambiguity and inaccuracy due to the subjective interpretation of the criteria by experts. The Fuzzy Set theory provides a convenient apparatus for formalization and creation of new intelligent decision-making methods, based on analysis and processing of the expert knowledge. This paper offers a method of fuzzy modelling of the problem of scientific and pedagogical staff attestation which gives the possibility of an adequate interpretation of the attestation results. The method can be implemented programmatically and can be incorporated in the systems of education quality management

The Role of Management Accounting and Control Systems as Information Networks and as Networks of Relationships on the Development of Organizational Knowledge

Management accounting and control systems (MACS) may be defined as part of the global information system, through which it is collected, processed, analyzed and communicated information (financial and nonfinancial, internal and external) used for planning, monitoring and control of different organizational activities, to optimize the use of resources, to support the process of decision making and to the performance evaluation process. In this way, the concept of MACS in use in this article expands the notion of management accounting systems to embrace the entire array of control mechanisms used by organizations (See Machintosh & Quattrone, 2010).The design of MACS as elements of organizational structure that favor the development of intellectual capital has been highlighted in the literature (Cf. e. g. Prieto, 1999; Tayles, Bramley, Adshead, & Farr, 2002; Roberts, 2003; Widener, 2004; Wingren, 2004; Bjurström & Roberts, 2007; Cleary, Kennedy, O’Donnell, O’Reagan, & Bontis, 2007; Tayles, Pike, & Sofian, 2007; Cleary, 2009; Massaro, Bardy, & Pitts, 2012; Massaro, Bardy, & Zanin, 2013), mainly as a means of communication, dissemination and interpretation favoring the interaction mechanisms essential to the creation, transmission and integration of organizational knowledge. In this article, MACS will be described as elements of the managerial apparatus that managers may use to promote the activities that invoke organizational knowledge, i.e., the fluid mix of framed experience, values, contextual information, and expert insight that provides a framework for evaluating and incorporating new experiences and information. Organizational knowledge often becomes embedded not only in documents or repositories but also in organizational routines, process, practices, and norms (Davenport & Prusak, 1998). The main objective of the article is to discuss the role of management accounting and control systems as information networks that collect, process and communicate information that influence the development of organizational knowledge, as well as networks of relationships that support the establishment of conditions for the creation and integration of organizational knowledge

The rationale of development practices for expert systems : an empirical investigation

Practices of expert system development are not widely investigated. In this paper I describe results of case studies on the inhouse deployment of small expert systems in two companies, along with a review of empirical research. The investigation focuses on the underlying rationale of the observed practices during the stages of design, field transfer and use. The examples show the importance of integrative approaches to technical and organizational aspects of development projects. The remaining potential for organizational turbulences is explained with inherent tensions of the rationale