دانلود مقاله ISI انگلیسی شماره 7115
ترجمه فارسی عنوان مقاله

پیش بینی تصمیمات در شرایط درگیری: مقایسه نظریه بازی، نقش بازی کردن و قضاوت بدون پشتوانه

عنوان انگلیسی
Forecasting decisions in conflict situations: a comparison of game theory, role-playing, and unaided judgement
کد مقاله سال انتشار تعداد صفحات مقاله انگلیسی
7115 2002 24 صفحه PDF
منبع

Publisher : Elsevier - Science Direct (الزویر - ساینس دایرکت)

Journal : International Journal of Forecasting, Volume 18, Issue 3, July–September 2002, Pages 321–344

ترجمه کلمات کلیدی
تعارض - نظر کارشناس - پیش بینی - نظریه بازی - حکم - نقش بازی کردن - شبیه سازی -
کلمات کلیدی انگلیسی
Conflict,Expert opinion,Forecasting,Game theory,Judgement,Role-playing,Simulation,
پیش نمایش مقاله
پیش نمایش مقاله  پیش بینی تصمیمات در شرایط درگیری: مقایسه نظریه بازی، نقش بازی کردن و قضاوت بدون پشتوانه

چکیده انگلیسی

Can game theory aid in forecasting the decision making of parties in a conflict? A review of the literature revealed diverse opinions but no empirical evidence on this question. When put to the test, game theorists’ predictions were more accurate than those from unaided judgement but not as accurate as role-play forecasts. Twenty-one game theorists made 99 forecasts of decisions for six conflict situations. The same situations were described to 290 research participants, who made 207 forecasts using unaided judgement, and to 933 participants, who made 158 forecasts in active role-playing. Averaged across the six situations, 37 percent of the game theorists’ forecasts, 28 percent of the unaided-judgement forecasts, and 64 percent of the role-play forecasts were correct.

مقدمه انگلیسی

In 1996 the New Zealand government transferred some of the assets of its monopoly electricity generator to a new private sector electricity-generating company, Contact Energy Ltd. It further split the residual into three entities in 1999. Wishing to know how participants in the new competitive market for wholesale electricity would behave following the second split, Contact organised its executives to role-play the generator company managers in a series of electricity trading simulations. The role-play behaviour was so at odds with the executives’ own beliefs about how the market participants should and would behave, that they ignored the forecast. Turning to game theory for help, Contact management found it to be “no help at all…the role-playing exercise had already foretold the future, as we were to find out to our cost.”1 This anecdote suggests that role-playing may be an effective approach to predicting decisions made in conflicts among small numbers of decision makers with much at stake. The primary purpose of the research described in this paper was to investigate the relative accuracy of methods used to forecast decisions made in real conflicts. For this purpose, I defined accuracy as the proportion of forecasts that match the actual decision. Accuracy is commonly regarded as the most important criterion for judging the worth of a forecast (Armstrong, 2001b). The methods I examined were unaided judgement, game theory, and role-playing. I defined game theory as what game theorists do when faced with practical forecasting problems. It was not the purpose of the study to investigate other aspects of the methods, such as their value for generating strategic ideas. While unaided judgement is commonly used to forecast decisions in conflicts, game theory and role-playing are not. Armstrong, Brodie, and McIntyre (1987) surveyed 59 practitioner members of the International Institute of Forecasters. The practitioners were asked about the use, by their respective organisations, of methods for forecasting competitive actions. The authors found that the organisations of 85 percent of practitioners used the opinions of experts with domain knowledge, the organisations of 8 percent of practitioners used formal game theory, and the organisations of 7 percent of practitioners used role-playing. The same study found expert opinion on the relative value of the methods to be at odds with the reported frequency of use by practitioners’ organisations. Both marketing and forecasting experts ranked game theory and role-playing more highly than practitioners, although they disagreed about the relative value of the two methods—forecasting experts preferred role-playing over game theory. Game theory may help practitioners provide more accurate forecasts than unaided judgement because, for example, the discipline of the approach should tend to counter judgemental biases. Indeed, Nalebuff and Brandenburger (1996, p. 8) wrote “by presenting a more complete picture of each…situation, game theory makes it possible to see aspects of the situation that would otherwise have been ignored. In these neglected aspects, some of the greatest opportunities…are to be found”. The entry on game theory in Bullock and Trombley’s (1999) dictionary states that game theorists “hope to produce a complete theory and explanation of the social world”. Given these claims and the fact that game theory is used by forecasting practitioners and is recommended by experts, it is legitimate to ask whether the method can help forecasters make useful predictions for real conflicts. Opinions on the value of game theory for forecasting real conflicts are diverse. In contrast to the optimistic claims made by Nalebuff and Brandenburger (1996) and in Bullock and Trombley (1999), Shubik (1975, p. xi) described the assumptions behind formal game theory as “peculiarly rationalistic”. He continued: “It is assumed that the individuals are capable of accurate and virtually costless computations. Furthermore, they are assumed to be completely informed about their environment. They are presumed to have perfect perceptions. They are regarded as possessing well-defined goals. It is assumed that these goals do not change over the period of time during which the game is played”. He concluded that while game theory may be applicable to actual games (such as backgammon or chess), and even be useful for constructing a model to approximate an economic structure, such as a market, “It is much harder to consider being able to trap the subtleties of a family quarrel or an international treaty bargaining session” (p. 14). The usefulness and realism of role-playing are often contrasted with the limitations of game theory in the game-theory literature. For example, Nalebuff and Brandenburger (1996, p. 62) emphasised the importance and difficulty of appreciating the perceptions of other parties. In a brief note, they suggested that one way for managers to do this is to “ask a colleague to role-play by stepping into [another] player’s shoes” (p. 63). Shubik (1975) dealt with role-playing more comprehensively. He stated that “an extremely valuable aspect of operational gaming is the perspective gained by viewing a conflict of interests from the other side. Experience gained in playing roles foreign to one’s own interests may provide insights hard to obtain in any other manner” (p. 9). Shubik further suggested that game theory is less realistic than role-playing (gaming): “In summary we should suggest that many of the uses of gaming are not concerned with problems which can be clearly and narrowly defined as belonging to game theory. Environment-poor experimental games come closest to being strict game theory problems. Yet even here, features such as learning, searching, organising, are best explained by psychology, social-psychology, management science, and other disciplines more relevant than game theory” (p. 17). Schelling (1961) stated that “part of the rationale of game organization [role-play experimentation] is that no straightforward analytical process will generate a ‘solution’ to the problem, predict an outcome, or produce a comprehensive map of the alternative routes, processes, and outcomes that are latent in the problem” (p. 47). In contrast, role-plays “do generate these complexities and, by most reports, do it in a fruitful and stimulating way”.

نتیجه گیری انگلیسی

The primary purpose of my research was to assess the relative worth of unaided judgement, game theory, and role-playing for predicting decisions made in real-world conflicts involving few players and high stakes. To do this, I combined new findings on the accuracy of game-theory experts’ predictions, role-play predictions, and predictions based on unaided judgement with role-play and unaided-judgement findings summarised in Armstrong (2001a). I then compared the accuracy of the forecasts from the different methods. The results support the view implied by Schelling (1961) and stated directly by Armstrong (2001a) that role-playing will provide more accurate forecasts than other methods for forecasting decisions in conflicts because it provides more realistic representations. The predictions of game-theory experts did offer an improvement over the traditional approach: their forecasts were more accurate, on average, than unaided judgement. Role-play predictions were better than chance and unaided judgement for all situations, and better than game-theory experts’ predictions for all but one situation. Game theorists’ forecasts, on the other hand, varied more widely in their accuracy than did role-play forecasts. Their forecasts were less accurate than the forecasts of people using unaided judgement for two of six situations and were no better than chance for four of the six situations. Game theorists are experts on conflicts, whereas the other research participants were not. Further research would be necessary to determine whether game-theory expertise confers any advantage over the unaided judgement of experts on conflicts who are not familiar with game theory. The cost of the forecasting methods is similar.