Distributed decision-making in a dynamic military environment
Publish date: 2002-01-01
Report number: FOI-R--0767--SE
Pages: 102
Written in: Swedish
Abstract
People have to make decisions every day. Decision-making in dynamic or natural environments is very demanding. Often, a lot is at stake, the problems are not well defined, the environment can change and the decisions have to be made under time pressure. When several people have to make decisions together they can organise their decision-making in different ways, for example, the group can have a democratic or a hierarchical structure. This report examines if a hierarchical structure is better, for experts and novices, during decision-making in a dynamic military domain. An experimental study was performed with students and officers in a micro world that was created through a commercial strategic war-game. In groups of four, the subjects got two military assignments that they had to solve. The results show that the students eliminated significantly more enemies than the officers. No other significant differences were acquired. The results may have been influenced by a number of factors; the students had, for example, more experience with computers, PC-games and strategic games than the officers.