Representation Of Decision-making Research Articles

GENDER FRONTLINES: EXPLORING THE INTERSECTIONALITY OF GENDER AND CLIMATE CHANGE

Gender Frontlines: Exploring the Intersectionality of Gender and Climate Change delves into the intricate relationship between gender and climate change, emphasizing how climate impacts exacerbate existing social inequalities. Climate change, with its severe effects on ecosystems and human societies, disproportionately affects vulnerable populations, particularly women, girls, transgender, and non-binary individuals. The framework of intersectionality, as introduced by Kimberlé Crenshaw, is crucial for understanding these compounded vulnerabilities influenced by overlapping social identities such as gender, race, and socioeconomic status. Through the lens of Sustainable Development Goal 5 (SDG 5), which advocates for gender equality, this article underscores the necessity of integrating gender perspectives into climate policies. It reviews how climate change affects health, economic stability, displacement, and migration, particularly among women and other marginalized genders. The article includes case studies from India, highlighting the challenges faced by women in agriculture in Telangana, the aftermath of Cyclone Amphan in West Bengal, and the impact of heatwaves on elderly women in urban slums. Furthermore, the article analyzes national and international climate policies, revealing gaps in gender-specific outcomes and the need for targeted enforcement. It advocates for a proactive approach to future climate strategies, emphasizing the importance of gender-disaggregated data, equal representation in decision-making, and targeted interventions. The article concludes with a call to action for comprehensive, gender-sensitive climate policies, engaging communities, NGOs, and governments in a collaborative effort to ensure an inclusive and equitable response to climate change.

Left out of the Room Where it Happens: Barriers to Serving in Senior Congressional Staff Roles May Limit “Representative” Science Policymaking

Policymakers are expected to represent the constituents of their districts and states. Given that the individual life histories and experiences of congressional staffers may influence their attitudes and decisions, it is crucial to understand more about the people serving in these roles, their diversity, and which communities are and are not well-represented. By conducting interviews with twenty-six current and former senior legislative staffers in the United States House of Representatives and Senate involved in drafting science policy, this study examines challenges to acquiring and maintaining key positions in scientific policymaking at the federal level. The results shed light on why some individuals have an unequal advantage to obtain senior staff roles while others struggle to stay in Congress long enough to achieve elite legislative positions. They also suggest that a lack of opportunities for already marginalized communities may lead to inadequate representation in decision-making, especially on science policy issues related to justice and equity. Ultimately, this article makes policy recommendations to foster greater diversity in senior staff roles and to bring the perspectives of more Americans into the science policy decision-making process.

What do you mean by organizational structure? Acknowledging and harmonizing differences and commonalities in three prominent perspectives

The organizational design literature stresses the importance of organizational structure to understand strategic change, performance, and innovation. However, prior studies diverge regarding the conceptualizations and operationalizations of structure. Organizational structure has been studied as an (1) arrangement of activities, (2) representation of decision-making, and (3) legal entities. In this point-of-view paper, the three prominent perspectives of organizational structure are discussed in terms of their commonalities, differences, and the need to study their relationship more thoroughly. Future research may not only wish to integrate these dimensions but also be more vocal about what type of organization structure is studied and why.

Intersectional Identities and Land Dispossession

Land grabbing has long been present in Southeast Asia, but with the spike in commodity prices in 2008, land grabbing intensified. The procedure is highly problematic as it often occurs at the expense of peasant farmers, land stewardship, food sovereignty, and human rights. So far, the literature has paid insufficient attention to the vulnerability of indigenous women and their intersectional vulnerability of gender and ethnicity when facing land dispossession. Such neglect poses far-reaching analytical limitations and questionable political implications. It is essential to bridge the gap between land-grabbing studies and the gendered implications of land dispossession on indigenous women to generate more nuanced analyses of the issue. Through a qualitative in-depth comparative analysis of the general implications of land dispossession on indigenous women in Southeast Asia and two case studies of the Cordillera Administrative Region in the Philippines and Kalimantan in Indonesia, the paper tries to answer how does the gendered politics of land dispossession affect indigenous women? It finds that indigenous women have higher physical and economic vulnerabilities due to land dispossession than non-indigenous women. These vulnerabilities are further heightened due to the lack of representation in decision-making. However, how these vulnerabilities play out highly depends on national and local factors.

Evaluating the Role of Participation in Different Design Phases for More Inclusive Housing

Urban growth and population increase have been major driving forces for cities, combined with an expanding heterogeneous sociocultural structure. The growing trends in urbanization pose massive challenges of inequalities and exclusions, primarily observed in housing. While housing was initially a sociocultural product involving users, it has transformed into a more standardized and financialized entity in the twentieth century, resulting in the abstraction of users from the production process. Against these exclusionary housing trends, it is the role of designers to redefine the place of users in housing for more inclusive results. So, this paper aims to investigate the potential of participatory approaches in housing to achieve more inclusive outcomes. Accordingly, accumulated knowledge on participation in housing starting in the 1960s is chronologically and interrelatedly discussed and mapped through prominent publications. Then, the benefits of specific participatory approaches in the inclusivity of housing are evaluated regarding three design phases to form a framework for future practices: i) design/predesign, ii) implementation, and iii) (post) occupancy. The study showed that participatory approaches at various phases and levels contribute to creating inclusive housing by increasing users’ representation in decision-making, demystifying professional tools, and allowing alternative and dynamic appropriation of living.

HTA8 The Catalan Health Service, An Example Where Patients Have Full Medicine Appraisal and Decision-Making Representation

HTA8 The Catalan Health Service, An Example Where Patients Have Full Medicine Appraisal and Decision-Making Representation

\u201cI may be essential but someone has to look after my kids\u201d: women physicians and COVID-19

ObjectivesThis paper analyzes results from focus groups held with women physicians in British Columbia which explored questions around how gender norms and roles influenced their experiences during COVID-19.MethodsFour virtual focus groups were organized between July and September 2020. Participants (n = 27) were voluntarily recruited. Data were analyzed using applied thematic analysis.ResultsIn addition to the COVID-19-related changes experienced across the profession, women physicians faced distinct challenges related to an increase in unpaid care responsibilities, and often felt excluded from, and occasionally dismissed by, leadership. Women leaders often felt their contributions were unrecognized and undervalued. Participants drew strength from other women leaders, peer networks, and professional support, but these strategies were limited by unpaid care and emotional labour demands, which were identified as increasing risk of burnout.DiscussionEven though women physicians hold a degree of relative privilege, unpaid care work and gender norms contribute to distinct secondary effects of COVID-19. Women physicians link these to pre-pandemic assumptions (within families and communities) that women would absorb care deficits at their own cost. Health system leadership continues to reflect a masculine normative experience wherein the personal and professional are separated, and which devalues the emotional labour often associated with feminine leadership. The strategies participants employed to address negative impacts, while demonstrating resourcefulness and peer support, reflect individualistic responses to social-structural challenges. There is a need for greater recognition of women’s contributions at home and work, increased representation in decision-making, and practical supports such as childcare and counselling.

Global Food Insecurity and African, Caribbean, and Black (ACB) Populations During the COVID-19 Pandemic: a Rapid Review.

BackgroundThe global food insecurity reinforces the ongoing impact of COVID-19 on human health and mortality. Although literature remained sparse, reports indicated that food insecurity is disproportionately high among African, Caribbean, and Black (ACB) population since the outset of COVID-19. Hence, we assessed the food insecurity conditions of ACB populations globally during the COVID-19 pandemic.MethodsComprehensive searches in CINAHL, Medline (Ovid), PubMed (Medline), Food Science and Technology s, SCOPUS, EMBASE, AMED, CAB s, Cochrane Library (OVID), and PsycINFO were carried out. Title/abstract and full-text screening, quality appraisal (modified JBI QARI), and data extraction were carried out by double reviewers.ResultsThe initial search yielded 354 articles. After removal of duplicates and irrelevant articles, a full-text review and critical appraisal, 9 papers were included in the study. After data extraction and synthesis, six major themes emerged from the analysis: increased food insecurity, adverse health outcomes of food insecurity, exacerbation of existing disparities, systemic inequities and adverse policies, racism, and sociocultural response and solutions.Conclusion/implicationsThe study showed that COVID-19 had exacerbated food insecurity and other health disparities within racialized populations including ACB people, due to systemic anti-Black racism; inadequate representation in decision-making; and issues of cultural appropriateness and competency of health services. While sociocultural response by ACB people through the expansion of their social capital is imperative, specific policies easing access to food, medicine, and shelter for racialized communities will ensure equity while reducing global food insecurity and health crises during the COVID-19 pandemic.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40615-021-00973-1.

The professionalization of social work in Israel’s Arab society

Social work in Israel’s indigenous Arab society developed late relative to its Jewish counterpart. Based on primary and secondary sources and semi-structured interviews with Arab social workers who were employed in social welfare bureaus during the years under review, the article describes and explains the development of social work in Israel’s Arab society in its formative years. The findings indicate this social work developed under government policies that recognized the needs of Arab society but allocated its welfare bureaus fewer resources than to the country’s Jewish society. These policies also failed to recognize the Arab narrative in welfare delivery and to incorporate Arab representation in decision-making. The relevant bodies in Israel that dealt with social work, primarily the Ministry of Welfare, used various strategies to maintain a dual system of welfare services – one for Jewish citizens and a poorer one for Arabs citizens.

Implementing gender quotas in academia: a practice lens

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the practices utilized by university actors when implementing gender quotas, and study how these practices affect gender equality in academic decision-making bodies. Design/methodology/approach The study applies a practice theory lens to the case study of a Belgian university implementing a gender quota by performing 26 semi-structured interviews with actors, and collecting and analyzing relevant organizational documents. Findings This study shows that university actors implement gender quotas through three practices: gender-specific calls, scouting and “playing around”. Identifying this variation in practices helps to understand both actors’ sense-making of compliance with gender quotas and women’s decision-making power in academic bodies. Research limitations/implications This study explores how practices interact with the organization’s broader context and its power dynamics. In future studies, adding ethnographic observations would strengthen the practice approach. Practical implications The study indicates that implementing gender quotas can foster women’s representation in decision-making, but that a strictly procedural sense-making of gender quotas could also undermine this. Universities should continue implementing gender quotas, further analyze their implementation practices and comprehensively adapt their organizational policies and practices to comply with gender equality goals substantively. Originality/value Through a practice theory approach, this paper offers original insight into how actors comply with gender quotas. Uncovering the implementation process in particular, the paper reveals how gender quotas could foster gender equality in academic decision-making.

Robot Evaluation and Selection with Entropy-Based Combination Weighting and Cloud TODIM Approach

Nowadays robots have been commonly adopted in various manufacturing industries to improve product quality and productivity. The selection of the best robot to suit a specific production setting is a difficult decision making task for manufacturers because of the increase in complexity and number of robot systems. In this paper, we explore two key issues of robot evaluation and selection: the representation of decision makers’ diversified assessments and the determination of the ranking of available robots. Specifically, a decision support model which utilizes cloud model and TODIM (an acronym in Portuguese of interactive and multiple criteria decision making) method is developed for the purpose of handling robot selection problems with hesitant linguistic information. Besides, we use an entropy-based combination weighting technique to estimate the weights of evaluation criteria. Finally, we illustrate the proposed cloud TODIM approach with a robot selection example for an automobile manufacturer, and further validate its effectiveness and benefits via a comparative analysis. The results show that the proposed robot selection model has some unique advantages, which is more realistic and flexible for robot selection under a complex and uncertain environment.

Selection among innovative project proposals using a hesitant fuzzy multiple criteria decision making method

Purpose- In recent decades, innovation and desearch and development (R&D) has been the key component for growth and economic competitiveness for companies and countries. Methodology- Since innovation Project require considerable funds and contain risk, it is important to evaluate their potantial performance and return on investment to make proper decision. Findings- The objective of this study is to develop a decision model for innovative Project selection using multicriteria decision making model (MCDM) and Hesitant Fuzzy sets. By using MCDM approach, various perspectives on project evaluation can be integrated into decision making model. Conclusion- Employing hesitant fuzzy sets enable a better representation of decision makers’ inguistic evaluations and thus provide better results.

Women Representation in Pakistani Legislatures

Women representation in decision-making and law-making is considered as a vital step in women empowerment. The Martial Law regime of General Pervez Musharraf1 brought in a drastic change in the composition of Pakistani legislatures at both central and provincial levels and has increased 17 per cent of reserved seats for women in 2002. However, this was much less than the 33 per cent stated in Strategic Objective G-2 in the plan. This step was deemed as a landmark in materialising the long-cherished dream of empowering Pakistani women. The purpose of this study is to assess the discourse on women’s political empowerment and their level of participation in mainstream politics by analysing the gender gaps in the Election Laws—General Elections of 2002, 2008 and 2013. Women are now present in all the legislative assemblies of Pakistan from more than a decade. How far this change has remained useful in addressing and solving the problems faced by Pakistani women? Furthermore, how these women legislators have performed on specific women-related issues or is this step just an extension of strengthening the dominant families in Pakistani politics? The issue of quota discourses in the Parliament is also discussed.

Dominance-based Rough Set Approach to decision under uncertainty and time preference

We consider a problem of decision under uncertainty with outcomes distributed over time. We propose a rough set model based on a combination of time dominance and stochastic dominance. For the sake of simplicity we consider the case of traditional additive probability distribution over the set of states of the world, however, we show that the model is rich enough to handle non-additive probability distributions, and even qualitative ordinal distributions. The rough set approach gives a representation of decision maker’s time-dependent preferences under uncertainty in terms of “if…, then…” decision rules induced from rough approximations of sets of exemplary decisions.

Les politiques de santé au travail au prisme de la sociologie de l'action publique

The article attempts to show how sociological approaches to public policy can be useful to understand the political specificity of the field of occupational health in France, although they remain rare on that question. They help us to understand how this field is structured through established compromises between interested parties including administrations, employers and employees' representatives, and how these compromises contribute to the relative public invisibility of occupational diseases. They also make it possible to see how these compromises are weakened by a series of contemporary evolutions: diversification of the employees' political and decision-making representation, increasing importance of the victims and of litigation arising from conflicts over these issues. Finally, they help us to describe the way this field resists these changes.

Strategic decision-making processes: network-based representation and stochastic simulation

Representation of decision-making in organizations is an intricate process. Qualitative Probabilistic Network (QPN)-based approach offers a scheme which is useful for representing processes involved in decision-making. This paper demonstrates the usefulness of QPN-based scheme with an illustrative case study. The focus of the case study is on understanding the strategic behavior of a key player in the Indian Automobile Industry. This is done by transforming Cognitive Maps developed into QPN-based formalisms and analyzing them. In addition to this, stochastic simulation experiment is performed on the QPN-based networks to generate hypothetical scenarios.

Appropriate Policy for Gender Equality in Employment: Insights from the ILO Interdepartmental Project on Equality for Women in Employment*

Using insights from the recent ILO Interdepartmental Project on Equality for Women in Employment, the article portrays gender inequality in the work situation as a complex issue requiring a number of interlinked strategies within a comprehensive proactive policy framework for its effective tackling. Interventions are required in: legal framework and enforcement; labour market, training and the general macro and micro-economic context; working conditions and reconciliation of work and family responsibilities; social security coverage; women's representation in decision-making; women's mobilization and participation in workers' and employers' organizations; and roles and concerted action by governments, employers, workers' organizations and other relevant bodies of civil society. Relevant statistical measurement instruments, concepts and up-to-date sex-disaggregated data are necessary for accurate assessment and monitoring. The creation of a supportive legislative framework, for example, involves reflecting gender equality in labour laws as well as in family and marriage, inheritance, contract, property ownership, national constitution and customary laws since the latter also influence women's economic situation and in some situations are even more important than the former.

Substantive and procedural uncertainty

Different sources of uncertainty are analysed and a representation of decision-making in principle consistent with behavioural evidence is proposed. The endogenous emergence of “innovations”, in the forms of unexpected events and novel behaviours is also examined.

The role of hierarchical knowledge representation in decisionmaking and system management

The knowledge representation of a decision-maker in control of a complex system can be structured in several levels of abstraction in a functional hierarchy. The role of such an abstraction hierarchy in supervisory systems control is reviewed, and the difference between causal and intentional systems and formal games is discussed in terms of the role of an abstraction hierarchy in the related decision strategies. This relationship is then discussed with reference to the classical psychological problem-solving research of O. Selz (1922) and others. Finally, the implications for the design of decision-support systems are discussed. It is argued that an explicit description of the functional properties of the system to be controlled in terms of an abstraction hierarchy is necessary for a consistent design of databases and display formats for decision-support systems. Also, it is necessary to consider the role of the abstraction hierarchy in reasoning when planning experiments on human decision-making.

Sensitivity analysis of the effect of variations in the form and parameters of a multiattribute utility model: A survey

Multiattribute utility models are used for evaluating alternatives when there are more than one criterion present. There is a trend toward the development of complicated versions of these models. These versions, although theoretically more accurate in the representation of decision makers' attitudes, require assessment procedures which are more difficult and time consuming to implement than simpler models. This paper reviews theoretical and empirical research involving the sensitivity analysis of multiattribute utility models in an attempt to answer the question of whether such additional complexities are worthwhile. Both deterministic and probabilistic models are considered and the studies are divided into four areas: (1) those involving sensitivity to the form of the multiattribute utility function; (2) those involving sensitivity to the parameters of the functions; (3) those involving sensitivity to the form and parameters of individual single attribute utility functions; and (4) those involving the relationship between deterministic and probabilistic models. A discussion of the results is given at the end.