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MANAGERIAL DECISION MAKING UNDER INTRANSITIVE CONDITIONS: AN INTERNATIONAL STUDY OF THE VOTER'S PARADOX
Author(s) -
Cummings Larry L.,
Harnett Donald L.,
Hamner W. Clay
Publication year - 1976
Publication title -
decision sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.238
H-Index - 108
eISSN - 1540-5915
pISSN - 0011-7315
DOI - 10.1111/j.1540-5915.1976.tb00697.x
Subject(s) - normative , nationality , preference , homogeneous , context (archaeology) , the imaginary , variance (accounting) , positive economics , group decision making , social psychology , economics , psychology , microeconomics , political science , law , mathematics , paleontology , accounting , combinatorics , immigration , psychotherapist , biology
Researchers and scholars have been concerned for many years with the normative aspects of amalgamating individual preferences to form a group decision. The present paper studies how managers actually make decisions involving intransitive preference functions by examining how the Voter's Paradox Conflict (VPC) is actually resolved by homogeneous groups of subjects from five different populations (Denmark, England, Switzerland, U.S. Private, and U.S. Military). The results showed that level of cooperation, the reward structure (real versus imaginary money), and experience with the VPC are the major factors relating to the solution obtained. Nationality differences explained little of the variance in decision outcomes. Intrasitivity in preferences seems to be handled similarly by executives in the countries studied. Interpretations are drawn in the context of cooperative and competitive decision theory and for cross‐cultural decision research.