Abstract
“Knowledge is power”—holds the popular proverb, because knowledge and information is indeed one of the cornerstones of effective decision making, a requisite all living beings face continually. In fact, effective decision making is a matter of life and death, for individuals and groups alike. Furthermore, in case of group decisions, consensus is also often desirable. This latter one has been studied extensively by means of formal (mathematical) tools (in the field of opinion dynamics), while the first requirement, the process of yielding accurate information has been largely neglected, at least so far. In the present paper we study the optimal structure of groups which are embedded into an external, observable environment for (i) reaching consensus (ii) having well-informed members, and (iii) for those cases when both aspects are equally important. The groups are characterised by their communication networks and individual properties. We find that the group structures fundamentally differ from each other since having well-informed members requires highly specialised individuals embedded into a structured communication network, while consensus is promoted by non-hierarchical networks in which individuals participate equally. We also find that—contrary to intuition—high access to information calls forth hierarchy, and that suggestibility promotes accuracy, not consensus.
Highlights
“Knowledge is power”—holds the popular proverb, because knowledge and information is one of the cornerstones of effective decision making, a requisite all living beings face continually
According to Nobel-laureate Daniel Kahneman, “Whatever else it produces, an organization is a factory that manufactures judgments and decisions”[1]. These decisions are of many kinds: they can relate to new investments, fundraising, change of profile, the hire of new employees, adaptation of new technologies, expansions to new areas—just to mention a few
What is common in these cases is that they are usually made by a few—top a most a few d ozen2—decision makers, all of whom have only partial access to the information necessary to make well-founded decisions: for example, considering a company, one of the decision-makers might have detailed information regarding the law environment in the country they are considering new investment in; an other one might be familiar with the local education system and the quality of expertise; a third member might be informed regarding the conditions of the local market, etc
Summary
“Knowledge is power”—holds the popular proverb, because knowledge and information is one of the cornerstones of effective decision making, a requisite all living beings face continually. In the present paper we study the optimal structure of groups which are embedded into an external, observable environment for (i) reaching consensus (ii) having well-informed members, and (iii) for those cases when both aspects are important. If the decision-making board of a company takes a bad decision regarding a new investment, it might go bankrupt In these (and many other real-life) cases the quality of the decisions fundamentally depend on the accuracy and completeness of information regarding the environment[8,9]. The groups are described by their communication networks, and by the characteristics of the individuals: their communication activity, observation activity, and their level of suggestibility (features that will be discussed in details in “The model” section) We optimise these values—including the communication network—by means of genetic algorithm[17], with three different “optimality” definitions:
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