ij – better decisions through governance

Decision Making at Scale: How to Choose a Voting Procedure?

If a group needs to vote, how should they choose between different ways to vote? The text covers common voting procedures and uses four case studies for illustration.

Decision Making at Scale: How Number of Decision Makers Influences Decision Speed

How does decision speed vary with the number of decision makers and what governance mechanisms allow an organization to manage this relationship?

Decision Making at Scale: How Coordination and Communication Costs React to the Number of Decision Makers

What are the differences in coordination and communication costs between having 1, 5, 100, and 1000 decision makers in a process to select new product investments?

Decision Making at Scale: Differences between 1, 5, 20, and 100 Decision Makers

This text compares four distinct cases of allocating decision authority – 1, 5, 20, and 100 decision makers – for a hypothetical mid-sized firm revising its product investment process.

When Is Credibility at Risk in Citizen Participation?

This text gives an overview of mechanisms by which credibility is reduced, during decision making that involves citizen participation. A hypothetical story of a participation process gone wrong is used as an example.

Decision Governance in Citizen Participation

What are the typical citizen participation decision making processes? What is common and different across these processes? What implications do these differences have on decisions?

Reputation Condenses Information. Which Other Mechanisms Have A Similar Role?

A reputation mechanism condenses specific information that influences one’s predictions of the behavior of others. What other related mechanisms condense information that is useful when predicting behavior of others?

Decision Complexity and Governance Responses

The degree of complexity in a decision matters because it determines not only the cost of reaching an outcome, but also the kinds of governance mechanisms that need to be in place to guide and monitor the process.

Reputation Mechanisms and Decision Governance

A reputation mechanism reshapes both the design of decision processes and the behavior of decision makers by shifting the basis of authority, incentives, and accountability.

How Bureaucracy Allocates Decision Authority

Bureaucracy remains one of the most enduring forms of coordination. Understanding how decision rights are structured within bureaucracies helps explain both their resilience and their shortcomings.

Necessary Conditions for a Reputation Mechanism

To establish a formal reputation mechanism in a group, six conditions must be met: observable actions, information transmission, information persistence, repeat interaction or interdependence, shared evaluation criteria, and consequences based on reputation.

Reputation Mechanisms: Information-Rich vs Information-Poor Transactions

Reputation mechanisms for information-rich transactions should prioritize interpretation and context, while those for information-poor transactions must emphasize completeness and trust signals.

Reputation Mechanisms: Asset-Specific vs. Generic Transactions

Reputation mechanisms for asset-specific transactions must prioritize long-term reliability and relationship signaling, while those for generic transactions can focus on short-term performance metrics and broad comparability.

Reputation Mechanisms: Spot vs. Repeated Transactions

Reputation mechanisms for spot transactions must focus on immediate trust cues, while mechanisms for repeated transactions should emphasize long-term behavioral consistency and relationship building.

Reputation Mechanisms: Market vs. Non-Market Transactions

Market transactions are structured by price and competition; non-market transactions rely on norms, roles, and relationships—so reputation must serve different goals in each.

Reputation Mechanisms: Key Design Decisions

When designing a reputation mechanism, what are the basic questions to consider?

Transparency: What Influences It, And What It Influences In Turn

How is transparency defined across different research disciplines? What influences level of transparency and, in turn, what does the level of transparency influence?

Transparency: When Is More Better?

What properties should a decision process have, to justify full transparency of all decision information?

Transparency: Is Less Always Worse?

Transparency can help trust and accountability. However, it comes with risks. What are the pros and cons of increasing transparency through decision governance?

How To Measure The Quality of Decision Governance?

Governance has a cost, so we need to know and measure its benefits. This text adapts adapts ideas from the measurement of quality of political governance to decision governance in a firm.

How & Why Does Decision Governance Change?

This text outlines and illustrates eight mechanisms of governance change.

Promises: Using Promises To Evaluate Agent Reputation – Part 3

We explore what happens if the higher reputation increases an agent’s probability to fulfill its promises.

Promises: Using Promises To Evaluate Agent Reputation – Part 2

What if fulfilling a promise increases an agent’s reputation? The framework in this text captures this idea.

Promises: Using Promises To Evaluate Agent Reputation – Part 1

The text presents a framework in which reputation is a function of promises between agents. The framework can be used to create a reputation mechanism to use in decision processes, in multi agent systems, and so on.

Promises: On Relationships Between Promises And Decisions

How is the common sense concept of promise related to decision making behavior in economics?

Reputation: Which Social Factors Influence It, And How

In a group, which factors influence the group’s perception of a decision maker’s reputation? How is that perception formed?

Reputation: Which Psychological Factors Influence It, And How

Which psychological factors influence the perceived motivation of a decision maker, why, and how?

Reputation: Consequences of High And Low Reputation on Decision Making

Reputation is generally defined as the collective perceptions, evaluations, and beliefs that a social group holds about an individual, organization, or entity. How is decision making different if the decision maker has high or low reputation?

How To Enforce A Commitment?

Commitment mechanisms are strategies, agreements, or institutional arrangements deliberately established to ensure adherence to decisions made at an earlier time. How to design them?

Preferences: Why & How To Destabilize Preferences

When is it valuable to destabilize preferences? How can decision governance be used to do it?

Preferences: Why & How To Keep Preferences Stable

When is it valuable for the decision maker to have stable preferences? Which factors can destabilize preferences? How can preferences be stabilized through decision governance?

Values → Preferences: How Values Shape Preferences

An individual’s values, among other factors, influence the preferences that they will have over options in a decision situation. How?

Values: What Are Value Conflicts In Decision Making?

Unlike technical trade-offs, value conflicts involve deeply held beliefs that resist simple calculation. What is a value conflict? And how can a decision-maker know that they are facing a value conflict?

Values: How They Form and Change

Several psychological and sociological mechanisms have been proposed to explain the formation and change of values in individuals. What variables and relationships do these mechanisms highlight?

Values: How Values Influence Mood, Attitude, and Emotions in Decision Making

Values influence moods, attitudes, and emotions in decision-making. Why and how does this occur?

Expectations: How They Form If Decision Makers Are Distant

How public expectations form is interesting for decision governance because they concern decision situations in which there is considerable distance between stakeholders and decision makers. How do expectations form about distant decision makers?

Values: General And Stable Guides For Decision Making

Values influence attitudes, behaviors, and decision-making processes by providing a sense of what is important. How does this influence decision making?

Expectations: How Do Expectations About Others Form?

When we are in a decision situation with others, we form expectations about their behaviour, which becomes an input to our own subsequent decisions and interactions with them. How do these expectations form?

Expectations: Different Definitions, Always About the Future

If we want to influence the expectations someone forms in a decision situation, we need to start with an understanding of what an expectation may be.

Competence → Authority: More Is Usually More

Competence plays a significant role in shaping authority and influence in group decision-making. Individuals perceived as competent often hold greater decision-making power, influence group consensus, and guide the strategic direction of collective choices. Why is this common?

Attitude: Role in Decision Making and Relationship to Emotion and Mood

Attitude is a stable, learned predisposition to respond favorably or unfavorably toward an object, person, or situation. How does attitude influence decision making?

Competence: Why And How Decision Quality Depends on Competence

The ability to make effective decisions is closely linked to an individual’s expertise, cognitive abilities, and confidence in their knowledge. Why and how is this the case?

When To Delegate Decision Authority?

One of the questions when designing decision governance is whether to motivate an individual with authority to delegate it to someone else. Why would they do it?

Attention → Emotion: How Attention Mediates Emotions in Decision Making

If we design a decision situation or process in a way which influences attention, then we will also, indirectly influence emotions of people involved in that decision. If we take their perspective instead, they can, by controlling their attention, influence their emotions. Why and how?