Adjusting Trade-Offs in Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Problems

In multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods, allowing trade-offs between the decision criteria may result in inappropriate conclusions. Allowing trade-offs implies that the weaknesses of an alternative in some criteria may be compensated by its strengths in other criteria. While, with some problems, there are no concerns with regard to allowing a full trade-off, in other cases, such a trade-off may not follow the actual decision-making problem. This paper proposes a new approach based on defining an upper and lower expectation level for each decision-making criterion. Indeed, the proposed approach is a framework by which the requirements of a decision-maker are considered in the criteria involved in MCDM problems. That distinction generates two primary and secondary performance matrices. The primary matrix includes the values of the alternatives with respect to the individual criterion up to the upper expectation levels of the decision-maker, while the secondary matrix, which is defined by the amounts above the upper levels and below the lower levels of the decision-maker’s expectations, contains each alternative in all the criteria and, to some extent, can exceed the upper levels of the decision-maker’s expectations. The final result of each alternative is calculated by adding its outcome in the two matrices. The results of a numerical example involving cellphone selection show how controlling the trade-offs could affect the results.

The government spending on education and health, and its impact on sustainable development in Sudan between (1995 - 2015): الإنفاق الحكومي على التعليم والصحة وأثره في التنمية المستدامة في السودان الفترة ما بين 1995 - 2015م

The study dealt with government spending on education and health and its impact on sustainable development, and limits of the study were Sudan between 1995 and 2015 sustainable. The study aims to know the effect of education and health in supporting sustainable development in Sudan. The study followed the descriptive analytical approach in terms of information collection, presentation of relevant data, and the views standard economy The most important findings of the study were the lack of government spending on education and health through the weakness of the selection factor in the two equations which led to the failure of education to harmonize the demands of the labor market and the lower expectation of age rates, the higher the government expenditure on education and health, the higher the rate of economic and social growth with a healthy environment and reduced illiteracy, leading to increased rates of sustainable government. The study made several recommendations, the most important of which were the need to increase government spending on education and health to achieve sustainable government in Sudan.

The isolating side effect of civic participation

Does widespread civic participation lead to more social capital? We argue that this is not necessarily the case. As more actors join voluntary associations, the pool of social resources available to non-active individuals is diluted, which can make it difficult for them to accrue social capital. We hypothesize that there is an insider/outsider effect, whereby widespread civic participation increases the risk that non-participants will be excluded from communal life. Using survey data from the German Freiwilligensurvey (German Volunteer Survey 1999–2014) and multi-level regressions, we examine the link between regional civic participation and individual social capital. Our findings reveal that civic participation rates on the macro level affect participants’ and non-participants’ friendship and support networks differently. While high macro-level participation is associated with more friendships and a higher expectation of receiving support for participants, it is also associated with fewer friendships and a lower expectation of receiving support for non-participants.

Drivers’ Braking Behaviors in Different Motion Patterns of Vehicle-Bicycle Conflicts

Bicycling is one of the popular modes of transportation, but bicyclists are easily involved in injuries or fatalities in vehicle-bicycle (V-B) accidents. The AEB (Autonomous Emergency Braking) systems have been developed to avoid collisions, but their adaptiveness needs to be further improved under different motion patterns of V-B conflicts. This paper analyzes drivers’ braking behaviors in different motion patterns of V-B conflicts to improve the performance of Bicyclist-AEB systems. For safety and data reliability, a driving simulator was used to reconstruct two typical conflict types, i.e., SCR (a bicycle crossing the road from right in front of a straight going car) and SSR (a bicycle cut-in from right in front of a straight going car). Either conflict contained various parameterized motion patterns, which were characterized by a combination of parameters: Vc (car velocity), TTC (time-to-collision), Vb (bicycle velocity), and Dlat (lateral distance between the car and the bicycle) or Vlat (maximum lateral velocity of the bicycle). Some 26 licensed drivers participated in an orthogonal experiment for braking behavior analysis. Results revealed that drivers brake immediately when V-B conflicts occur; hence the BRT (brake reaction time) is independent of any motion pattern parameters. This was further verified by another orthogonal experiment with 10 participants using the eye tracking device. BRT in SSR is longer than that in SCR due to the less perceptible risk and drivers’ lower expectation of a collision. The braking intensity and brake Pedal Speed are higher in short-TTC patterns in both conflict types. Therefore, TTC is not a proper activation threshold but a reasonable indicator of braking intensity and Pedal Speed for driver-adaptive AEB systems. By applying the findings in the Bicyclist-AEB, the adaptiveness and acceptability of Bicyclist-AEB systems can be improved.

CEO Origin and Accrual-Based Earnings Management

SYNOPSIS This study examines the influence of CEO origin on accrual-based earnings management and how these effects evolve over the CEO's tenure in office. Compared with CEOs promoted from within the company, CEOs recruited from outside have a stronger incentive to demonstrate their abilities in the initial years after their appointment; these outside CEOs also may have a lower expectation of surviving the short run. We predict and find that outside CEOs engage in greater income-increasing manipulation in the early years of their tenure. However, the differences in earnings management practices become insignificant after CEOs survive the short run. Our results are robust to a variety of alternative hypotheses and sensitivity checks. The findings thus show that CEO origin is an important factor for explaining financial reporting strategies; they also add to our understanding of CEO origin, managerial horizon problems, and the determinants of aggressive accounting. Data Availability: The data used in this study are publicly available from the sources indicated in the text.

Perspectives on Medical Services Integration among Conventional Western, Traditional Korean, and Dual-Licensed Medical Doctors in Korea

The aim of this study was to examine the perspectives on the options for the integration of western and traditional Korean medical services among three types of medical doctors with different disciplines in Korea. We surveyed and analyzed responses from 167 conventional Western medicine (WM), 135 traditional Korean medicine (KM), and 103 dual-licensed (DL) doctors who can practice both. All three kinds of doctors shared similar attitude toward license unitarization. KM doctors most strongly agreed on the need of the cooperative practice (CP) between KM and WM and on the possibility of license unitarization among three groups. DL doctors believed that CP is currently impracticable and copractice is more efficient than CP. WM doctors presented the lowest agreement on the need of CP and showed lower expectation for DL doctors as mediators between WM and KM than others. This study showed the difference of perspectives on the options for the integrative medical services among three different doctor groups in Korea. More studies are required to explore the underlying reasons for these discrepancies among WM, KM, and DL doctors.

SELF-EVALUATIONS INVOLVED IN GOAL SETTING AND TASK PERFORMANCE

Reactions from individuals having high (>50%) and low (<50%) evaluations of their relative ability on a task are compared. Low evaluation individuals had lower self-esteem as compared to the high evaluation group. The low evaluation group also had lower self-efficacy on the task, set lower goals, and had a lower expectation that they would attain the goal than the high evaluation group. In addition, the low evaluation group had less positive attitudes and lower commitment toward attaining the goal. Perhaps as a consequence of the poor evaluations, the low evaluation group had lower task performance and continued to have lower self-esteem subsequent to task performance.