Distributed Decision Making

From the reviews of the second edition: "The structure of the book is well chosen: Part I provides the basic concepts of distributed decision-making (DDM), Part II describes general applications, and Part III focuses on leadership and coordination processes. The main achievement is unification of several DDM problems ... . The different DDM problems addressed are presented with great clarity and detail ... . I think this book has great value as it shows how many different DDM problems share very similar mathematical structures." (F Coolen, Journal of the Operational Research Society, Vol. 55 (7), 2004) "Distributed decision making (DDM) has become of increasing importance in quantitative decision analysis and in application areas such as supply chain management and service operations; it has led to a paradigm shift. This book provides a unified approach to such seemingly diverse fields as multi-level stochastic programming, hierarchical production planning, principal agent theory, negotiations or contract theory." (International Logistics Abstracts, Vol. 33 (5), 2003) "This very interesting book deals with distributed decision making, which consists of a rapidly growing area of decision theory ... . The book concludes with exercises with solutions, a detailed bibliography and an index." (Efstratios Rappos, Zentralblatt MATH, Vol. 1079, 2006)

• 1: Introduction.- 1.1 Some Typical Examples of Distributed Decision Making Situations.- 1.2 Examples of DDM Systems.- 1.3 Some Important Properties of DDM Systems.- 1.4 Outline of the Treatise.- I: Basic Foundations.- 2: Basic Concepts.- 3: Constructional DDM Systems.- 4: Organizational DDM Systems.- 5: Principal Agent Theory.- II: General Applications.- 6: Hierarchical Production Planning.- 7: Organizational Design.- 8: Implementation.- 9: Supply Chain Management.- 10: Service Operations.- 11: Managerial Accounting.- III: Leadership and Coordination Processes.- 12: General DDM Systems.- 13: Coordination through Communication.- 14: Negotiations.- 15: Distributed Decision Making in Multi-Agent Systems.- 16: A Unifying Perspective of the Management Process.- Exercises.- Solutions to the Exercises.