The purpose of the paper is to test whether people make different decisions when a task requires either a fixed delay or a continuous delay conceptualisation. With the help of a structurally simple dynamic decision making task, we test two conditions in a controlled experiment: hiring when personnel stays in an organisation for exactly ten years (fixed delay condition) or when personnel stays on average for ten years (continuous delay condition). In this preliminary study, 71 participants were tested. Findings so far show no differences in performance between the groups, indicating that they most likely use the same cognitive representation of the task. Since participants answers are substantially closer to the fixed delay condition, we assume that people have the tendency to conceptualise lags in the form of discrete delays, at least in the context of personnel hiring. Research implications comprise the repetition of the experiment to achieve a higher number of participants and to allow for a more extreme differentiation between the two conditions. Practical implications regard the formulation of decision making tasks within organisations, for instance in human resource management. The value of this paper lies in its rigorous usage of a structurally simple dynamic task to shed light on a fundamental trait of human decision making.
To better understand the performance of hospital operations in response to IT-enabled improvement, we report the results of a system dynamics model designed to improve core medical processes. Utilizing system dynamics modeling and emerging Health Information Systems (HIS) data, we demonstrate how current behavior within the hospital leads to a stove-pipe effect, in which each functional group employs policies that are rational at the group level, but that lead to inefficiencies at the hospital level. We recommend management improvements in both materials and staff utilization to address the stove-pipe effect, estimate the resultant cost-saving, and report the results of a new experiment conducted in the hospital to validate our approach. We believe that the major gains in health information systems use will accompany new information gathering capabilities, as these capabilities result in collections of data that can be used to greatly improve patient safety, hospital operations, and medical decision support.
After announcing the fuel rationing policy in 2008, government decided to eliminate subsidies in order to manage consumption of natural resources. Thus, a cashing subsidy policy has been applied since end of 2010. In first stage, different kinds of energy and resources like water were considered. Government's plan was to pay subsidies directly to consumers.
We began to develop an agent-based epidemiological model of animal disease propagation within the beef and dairy industries. Model development was done in context of a consortium of interested parties including the New Mexico State University (NMSU) Extension Service, the New Mexico Livestock Board (NMLB), ranchers representing the beef industry, and farmers representing the dairy industry. The model required a thorough understanding of the life cycles for commodity livestock, especially the transportation and mixing that occurs as part-and-parcel of how production and commerce is practiced. Once this detailed network of animal movement and interaction is articulated within the model, we can simulate the introduction of disease at any given location and track its propagation. The model will serve to understand how inter-operation transfer of livestock can impact the likelihood and magnitude of infectious disease outbreaks. With this understanding, the cost-effectiveness of current and proposed prevention and monitoring strategies, as well as mitigation strategies, can be assessed. Our first focus for model application may be the propagation of bovine tuberculosis (TB) in beef cattle. In subsequent work, we would like to expand the computational model to include dairy cattle, and to consider the propagation of other diseases such as foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) and Rift Valley fever.
Physicians are far from optimal decision makers: they overuse defensive medical practices such as medical tests (bias), and they disagree on their diagnoses and treatments (practice variation). Besides the regional factors (such as culture), at the individual level, the most common explanations for these phenomena are linked to physicians personality traits (e.g., risk aversion) or their financial incentives. We develop a theory that offers a new explanation. With the help of a simulation model, we show that practice variation and bias does not have to be caused by personality traits and financial incentives, but can endogenously emerge through daily practices and outcome learning even for physicians with similar trainings working in the same region. Specifically, a physicians exposure to outcome feedback and her accumulated experience and skill contribute to variation and bias. A preliminary validation is achieved by comparing simulation results with the data from c-section surgery in the states of New York and Florida.