Decision making structures. Dealing with uncertainty within organizations (Q1909271)

The authors consider decision making structures within organizations; the choice made by an organization results from the choices made by its members. Different architectures of the organizations and different majority rules are analyzed. The results of the authors are deeply influenced by the papers of Sah and Stiglitz published in the late eighties. In part I of the book the authors present models of decision making structures. Conditions are given for determining optimal majority rules in different settings. An extension of Condorcet's jury theorem is presented. In part II the authors present a decision structure (pyramid decision structure) which can be seen as a combination of polyarchy and hierarchy. At different levels a project is accepted if at least one member of the level accepts it, the organization accepts the project if all levels accept it. The levels are ordered; the number of members declines with increasing levels. Given the total number of members and the number of levels the configurations (distributions of members across the levels) are ranked with respect to the accuracy of the made decision and to time delay. It is shown that this ranking is consistent with a decreasing ranking of the loyality of the members.