Study On Group Decision-making Problems Of Large-scale Construction Projects Under The Assumption Of Bounded Rationality

The decision-making activity of large-scale construction project,which runs through the whole process of project construction management,has profound continuing effect to social and economic development.However,decision-makers(DMs)of construction projects are confronted with many unprecedented difficulties and challenges.First of all,practical construction decision-making problems are characterized by uncertainty,complexity and diversity in terms of activities,resources,stakeholders and dynamic external environment,which give rise to the lack of the experience,knowledge and ability of decision-making.Secondly,because the decision-making of construction projects is the activity to synthesize the wisdom of many DMs and wide fields,it requires the government,the expert groups,research institutions,consulting,the public and other stakerholders to participate in the activity.To meet these challenges we must address the complexity and apply the scientific ideas and methods to the organization and management.Moreover,DMs' actual psychological and behavioral characteristics must be also understood in-depth on the basis of behavioral decision theory.The decision-making of construction projects shoulde be based on the rationality and the experimental data.However,the bounded rational factors of DMs,especially the psychological and emotional factors will play an important role in the practice of project management.Consequently,the article analyzes the practical psychological and behavior characters based on behavioral decision theory.The definition of group decision-making of large-scale construction projects considering the bounded rational characteristics has been established.The complexity of group decision-making system in construction project management is analyzed making use of complexity science theory.Several key issues of group decision-making management practices are investigated based on the bounded rationality perspective to improve the quality and effectiveness of construction project management.The investigation of this article has important theoretical value and practical significance.More details are listed bellow.Firstly,group decision-making mechanism of large-cale construction projects is set up containing the five elements of DMs,decision-making criterias,decision-making processes,decision-making methods and institution construction based on system engineering methodology.Under the framework of decision-making management,the paper discusses the complexity of group decisiom-making system of large-scale construction projects from three perspectives,such as decision-making objects' complexity,decision-making units' complexity and decision-making processes'complexity applying complexity science theories and methods.Some management advices and strategies are put forward to control the complexities of group decision-making system.Secondly,this dissertation explores the decision-making units' complexity problems of group decision-making using various decision-making theories and methods,on the assumption of DMs' bounded rationality.The DMs' complexity is divided into three categories,which are individual cognitive complexity,indivual behavior complexity and group structure complexity.Consequently,three group decision-making problems are investigated in accordance with the three kinds of complexities.The uncertain group decision-making problem of the partial preorder with certain degrees of belief is handled applying Dempster-Shafer theory of evidence in this article.Furthermore,the group decision-making problem considering individual bounded rational behavior(loss aversion,reference point dependence and overestimate small probability)is investigated based on prospect theory.Moreover,the method to coordinate conflic among stakeholders is proposed on the basis of Graph Model for Conflict Resolution(GMCR).Thirdly,this dissertation investigates the decision-making processes'complexity problems.The interactive group decision-making process is conducted out making use of interactive linear programming and optimization theory.Then the optimal stopping problem of interactive group decision-making process in construction project management is proposed under the satisfactory criteria raised by Simon.We apply the theory of relative entropy to aggregate participants' preference about alternatives into a single consensus or compromise one.The consistency of group preference is set up as stopping criteria for the interactive group decision-making process in large-scale construction project management.Finally,attention was paid to the simulation of the entire stages of dynamic group decision-making process in the large-scale construction project management under the bounded rationality perspective.To study the individual interactions and describe opinion dynamics and consensus formation among participants with different opinions,the process of strategy selection is modeled and simulated by game theory with incomplete information of personal characters.According to the asymmetry of information in group communication,we present a payment matrix with incomplete information assuming that the individuals have different inclinations to change opinion and different abilities in convincing the others.Furthermore,memory and learning mechanism of agents is introduced,and the acquaintance for neighbors'personality is updated through the process of communication.The investigation helps to understand the practical psychological and behavioral characteristics of DMs and can serve as reference for guiding group communication in project management.