Johannes Siebert

Category: publications-research

  • Applying Decision Analysis to Diverse Domains: An Introduction to the Special Issue

    Applying Decision Analysis to Diverse Domains: An Introduction to the Special Issue

    Decision analysis (DA) is one of the key tools in operations research (OR). DA is particularly effective at mapping the real world to the model representation to enable the application of formal analysis. DA is a flexible modeling paradigm that has existed since the 1960 s, based on statistical decision theory, elements of utility from economics, probability theory, dynamic programming, and stochastic programming. It aims to identify an optimal course of action for decision problems with uncertainties that affect outcomes and values. Optimal here means expected-utility maximizing, which decision theory shows to be equivalent to following axioms of rationality given a set of beliefs.

    DA articles have appeared with some regularity in Interfaces (the predecessor to INFORMS Journal on Applied Analytics (IJAA)), with early applications focusing on policy and later ones on research and development in consumer products, pharmaceuticals, and oil and gas, quite naturally because these applications have distinct decision points when investments are continued or cut off (which is the meaning of the Latin root decidere). A 1992 special issue of Interfaces, “Decision and Risk Analysis,” highlighted applications that used rich representations of decision problems, such as influence diagrams as an abstraction of the decision tree, strategy tables to define complex alternatives, and practical techniques involving value-focused thinking and value hierarchies to implement multiattribute utility theory.

    All these developments help capture the knowledge and concerns of problem owners through model specification and judgment elicitation. In addition, DA models often interface with or subsume separate sophisticated technical or financial models. And DA representations aid in communicating the implications of models via, for example, tornado charts, portfolio diagrams, cumulative distributions, and risk profiles.

    In recent years, DA has added sophisticated computational abilities. Although to this day many DA applications ultimately reduce to decision tree calculations or the equivalent, software has improved to include modular graphical development that interfaces with spreadsheets and programming environments such as R and Python. Theory connected to DA also continues to advance, for example, group decision theory and extensions of utility theory to multiparty situations in which considerations such as equity are important. There is a substantial amount of adjacent computerintensive work on Bayes nets, machine learning, and inference. The science of elicitation has grown exponentially, ranging from increased understanding of judgmental biases, wisdom of crowds, and other ways to combine judgments of multiple experts to increased mathematical and computational sophistication, most recently advancing with copulas to represent correlations of different natures between variables. As seen in this issue, DA is increasingly well linked with other OR techniques, such as math programming for portfolio DA, leading to innovations in scholarship and practice. Thus, DA is an exciting field of interest to IJAA readers on its own merits but also as a field that can add value to other areas of OR.

    Saurabh Bansal, Jeffrey M. Keisler, Johannes U. Siebert, Karen E. Jenni (2023) Applying Decision Analysis to Diverse Domains: An Introduction to the Special Issue. INFORMS Journal on Applied Analytics 53(3):173-177. https://doi.org/10.1287/inte.2023.1163

  • Reducing the impact of misinformation and fake news

    Reducing the impact of misinformation and fake news

    New methods to effectively reduce the negative impact of misinformation and fake news on people’s opinions

    An investigation into Team Jorge’s activites has shown the sinister influence of misinformation and fake news on politics, society and the economy. Misinformation and fake news became a global phenomenon with the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the Brexit referendum, particularly because more and more people are using social media as a source of news without reflection. The use of artificial intelligence (e.g. chat GPT) in the generation and dissemination of misinformation and fake news will strengthen their influence in the future.The spread of misinformation and fake news on the internet and its consequences are being intensively discussed in the European Parliament. Nevertheless, so far, there is no clear agreement on how to reduce the influence of misinformation and fake news.

    “The problem with misinformation and fake news is that even if it is flawlessly identified as such, something still ‘sticks’ – the misinformation and fake news continue to influence our opinion, explains Prof. Johannes Siebert who researches and teaches at MCI | The Entrepreneurial School®. This phenomenon is called “belief perseverance bias“ and explains the great influence of misinformation and fake news on the formation of opinion and the decision-making behavior of many people. “There are numerous newsrooms and nonprofit organizations that identify misinformation and fake news. This very elaborate work helps reduce the influence of misinformation and fake news. However, these fact checks can only be a first step,“ adds Dr. Jana Siebert.

    The two researchers have been working on the methodological reduction of the belief perseverance bias in the context of misinformation and fake news in the project “PerFake“ funded by the European Union and the Czech Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports. The aim of the PerFake project was to contribute to reducing the negative influence of misinformation and fake news. Prof. Johannes Siebert and Dr. Jana Siebert developed two methods to reduce the belief perseverance bias and tested and optimized them in two experiments with numerous participants. The first results have been published in the prestigious journal PLoS ONE.

    Both tested debiasing methods showed promising results in reducing the belief perseverance bias. The debiasing method “counter-speech“ focuses on refuting the misinformation and fake news by clear counter-arguments. The debiasing method “awareness training“ generally informs the participants about the existence of the belief perseverance bias and how the bias works. Such awareness training could help increase society’s resilience to misinformation and fake news. Prof. Johannes Siebert explains how this can work in practice: “Let us assume you have received a piece of information, for example, you have heard a speech by a politician or read a post on social media. A fact check shows that it is fake news. Being aware of the belief perseverance bias should then help you realize that your original opinion may still be negatively influenced by the fake news and subsequently correct this bias.“ Dr. Jana Siebert adds: “It would, therefore, be desirable to educate the public about the belief perseverance bias and the way it works. For example, fact-checking organizations could complement their fact checks with a note informing about the belief perseverance bias. Such a note could significantly increase the effectiveness of fact-checking and society’s resilience to misinformation and fake news.“

    See also: https://www.mci.edu/en/news-filter-en/228-researchnews/4845-reducing-the-impact-of-misinformation-and-fake-news

    Source:

    Siebert, J., & Siebert, J. U. (2023). Effective mitigation of the belief perseverance bias after the retraction of misinformation: Awareness training and counter-speech. PLoS ONE 18(3): e0282202. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0282202

  • Making a good career choice: A decision-analytical intervention to enhance proactive decision-making and career choice self-efficacy in high school students

    Making a good career choice: A decision-analytical intervention to enhance proactive decision-making and career choice self-efficacy in high school students

    At the end of high school, teenagers must deal with the first life-changing decision of determining what to do after graduation. For these decisions, adolescents need to be able to make good choices. However, most schools have not yet implemented decision training into their curricula. A new intervention called “KLUGentscheiden!” was developed to train complex decision-making in high school students to close this gap.

    The intervention targets three critical components of good decision-making: envisioning one’s objectives, identifying relevant alternatives, and comparing the identified alternatives by a weighted evaluation. We assumed that successfully training those decision-analytical steps should enhance self-perceived proactive decision-making skills. In addition, the training should also enhance self-assessed career choice self-efficacy.

    The intervention was evaluated in a pseudorandomized control study, including 193 high school students. The intervention group significantly increased proactive decision-making skills and career choice self-efficacy compared to the control group. Although different long-term evaluations are still pending, the KLUGentscheiden! intervention provides an essential tool for training complex decision-making in high school students. It also has the potential to apply to other career choices of young individuals, such as choosing majors, a final thesis, a job, or a field of work.

    Siebert, Johannes U., Becker, Maxi; Oeser, Nadine. “Making the right career choice: A new educational tool to train decision-making proactivity in high school students” (Decision Sciences Journal for Innovative Education), https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/dsji.12280.

  • Supporting Innovation in Early-Stage Pharmaceutical Development Decisions

    Supporting Innovation in Early-Stage Pharmaceutical Development Decisions

    Pharmaceutical companies have frequent portfolio reviews to monitor development progress and prioritize development assets. The earliest assets are drug candidates whose efficacy is unknown and whose effects on the human body have yet to be fully investigated. These assets are characterized by a high degree of uncertainty in reaching the market and in being used in clinical practice. In addition, not all potential applications are foreseen and can often be very different. In the absence of satisfactory methods for making decisions on resource allocation among early development assets, decision makers focus almost exclusively on assessments of an asset’s probability of technical success.

    This study proposes a more holistic methodology to support early-stage pharmaceutical development decisions using value-focused thinking and multicriteria decision making. The methodology operates within the decision quality framework and provides a consistent evaluation of various early development assets across a diverse set of disease areas. This combination of concepts and methodologies has been implemented and proven valuable at Bayer Pharmaceuticals, which needed a new, more robust decisionmaking process for early development. Thus, this study discusses how to enable concrete trade-offs at the level of corporate objectives to align, communicate, and translate corporate strategy into portfolio strategy.

    In addition, this study presents learnings for decision analysts and decision makers in the pharmaceutical industry on how to develop a set of fundamental objectives, how to create scales to operationalize these objectives, and how to take steps to debias an organizational decision-making process.

    Methling, Florian; Borden, Steffen A., Veeraraghavan, Deepak; Sommer; Insa, Siebert, Johannes Ulrich; von Nitzsch, Rüdiger; Seidler, Mark „Supporting Innovation in Early-Stage Pharmaceutical Development Decisions “, in Special Issue on Health Decision Analysis: Evolution, Trends, and Emerging Topics by Elisa F. Long, Gilberto Montibeller, Jun Zhuang, Decision Analysis (INFORMS), https://doi.org/10.1287/deca.2022.0452

  • Effects of Decision Training On Individuals’ Decision-Making Proactivity

    Effects of Decision Training On Individuals’ Decision-Making Proactivity

    Decision sciences are in general agreement on the theoretical relevance of decision training. From an empirical standpoint, however, only a few studies test its effectiveness or practical usefulness, and even less address the impact of decision training on the structuring of problems systematically. Yet that task is widely considered to be the most crucial in decision-making processes, and current research suggests that effectively structuring problems and generating alternatives—as epitomized by the concept of proactive decision making—increases satisfaction with the decision as well as life satisfaction more generally.

    This paper empirically tests the effect of decision training on two facets of proactive decision making—cognitive skills and personality traits—and on decision satisfaction. In quasi-experimental field studies based on three distinct decision-making courses and two control groups, we analyze longitudinal data on 1,013 decision makers/analysts with different levels of experience. The results reveal positive training effects on proactive cognitive skills and decision satisfaction, but we find no effect on proactive personality traits and mostly non-significant interactions between training and experience. These results imply the practical relevance of decision training as a means to promote effective decision making even by more experienced decision makers.

    The findings presented here may be helpful for operations research scholars who advocate for specific instruction concerning proactive cognitive skills in courses dedicated to decision quality and/or decision theory and also for increasing, in such courses, participants’ proactive decision making and decision satisfaction. Our results should also promote more positive decision outcomes.

    Veröffentlichung Siebert, Johannes U.; Kunz, Reinhard, Rolf, Philipp. “Effects of decision training on individuals’ decision-making proactivity”, European Journal of Operational Research, 294 (1) 2021, 264-282, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2021.01.010

  • Defining and Aligning Supply Chain Objectives Before, During, and After the COVID-19 Pandemic 3

    Defining and Aligning Supply Chain Objectives Before, During, and After the COVID-19 Pandemic 3

    In order to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, many companies face numerous strategic decisions of utmost importance for their future. Being aware of one‘s objectives is a prerequisite for sound decision making. However, decision and policymakers are often not aware of their objectives when facing important decisions in “normal” times. In addition, specific objectives have to be identified in times of crisis such as theCOVID-19 pandemic.

    In this article, we provide guidelines for managers that illustrate the following. (i) How to identify company objectives? (ii) How to align them within their supply chains and with governmental objectives of policy makers? (iii) How to adjust objectives during and after theCOVID-19 pandemic? Furthermore, we suggest comprehensive sets of relevant objectives and propose an iterative process to define, align, and adjust objectives.

    The study may help practitioners from business and public administration when making decisions and policies. Researchers may be inspired by the outlined viewpoints on decision-making processes and the addressed perspectives for future research.

    Siebert, Johannes U.; Brandenburg, Markus; Siebert, Jana. “Defining and aligning supply chain objectives before, during and after the COVID-19 pandemic”, IEEE Engineering Management Review, 48(4), 2020, 72-85, doi: 10.1109/EMR.2020.3032369

  • Comparative Analysis of Terrorists’ Objectives Hierarchies

    Comparative Analysis of Terrorists’ Objectives Hierarchies

    To develop effective counterterrorism strategies, it is important to understand the capabilities and objectives of terrorist groups. Much of the understanding of these groups comes from intelligence collection and analysis of their capabilities. In contrast, the objectives of terrorists are less well understood. In this article, we describe a decision analysis methodology to identify and structure the objectives of terrorists based on the statements and writings of their leaders. This methodology was applied in three case studies, resulting in the three objectives hierarchies of al-Qaeda, Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), and Hezbollah. In this article, we propose a method to compare the three objectives hierarchies, highlight their key differences, and draw conclusions about effective counterterrorism strategies. We find that all three terrorist groups have a wide range of objectives going far beyond the objective of killing and terrorizing people in the non-Muslim world. Among the shared objectives are destroying Israel and expelling Western powers from the Middle East. All three groups share the ambition to become a leader in the Islamic world. Key distinctions are the territorial ambitions of ISIL and Hezbollah versus the large-scale attack objectives of al-Qaeda. Objectives specific to ISIL are the establishment of a caliphate in Iraq and Syria and the re-creation of the power of Sunni Islam. Hezbollah has unique objectives related to the establishment of a Palestine State and to maintain the relationship with and support of Iran and Syria. Al-Qaeda’s objectives remain focused on large-scale attacks in the West. We also note a recent shift to provide support for small-scale attacks in the West by both al-Qaeda and ISIL. Our method can be used for comparing objectives hierarchies of different organizations as well as for comparing objectives hierarchies over time of one organization.

    Veröffentlichung

    Siebert, Johannes U.; von Winterfeldt, Detlof. „Comparative Analysis of Terrorists’ Objectives Hierarchies“, Decision Analysis (INFORMS) June 2020, 17(2), 97-114, https://doi.org/10.1287/deca.2019.0400

  • Effects of Proactive Decision Making On Life Satisfaction

    Effects of Proactive Decision Making On Life Satisfaction

    Dr. Johannes Siebert, Universität Bayreuth

    Veröffentlichung

    Siebert, Johannes U.; Kunz, Reinhard, Rolf, Philipp. “Effects of Proactive Decision Making on Life Satisfaction”, European Journal of Operational Research, 280(1) 2020, 1171-1187,  doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2019.08.0111)

    Proactive decision making, a concept recently introduced to behavioural operational research and decision analysis, addresses effective decision making during its phase of generating alternatives. It is measured on a scale comprising six dimensions grouped into two categories: proactive personality traits and proactive cognitive skills. Personality traits are grounded on such theoretical constructs as a proactive attitude and proactive behaviour; cognitive skills reflect value-focused thinking and decision quality. These traits and skills have been used to explain decision satisfaction, although their antecedents and other consequences have not yet been the subject of rigorous hypotheses and testing.

    This paper embeds proactive decision making within a model of three possible consequences. We consider—and empirically test—decision satisfaction, general self-efficacy, and life satisfaction by conducting three studies with 1,300 participants. We then apply structural equation modelling to show that proactive decision making helps account for life satisfaction, an explanation mediated by general self-efficacy and decision satisfaction. Thus proactive decision making fosters greater belief in one’s abilities and increases satisfaction with one’s decisions and with life more generally. These results imply that it is worthwhile to help individuals enhance their decision-making proactivity.

    Demonstrating the positive effects of proactive decision making at the individual level underscores how important is the phase of generating alternatives, and it also highlights the merit of employing “decision quality” principles and being proactive during that phase. Hence the findings presented here confirm the relevance of OR, and of decision-analytic principles, to the lives of ordinary people.

  • Can Novices Create Alternatives of The Same Quality as Experts?

    Can Novices Create Alternatives of The Same Quality as Experts?

    Dr. Johannes Siebert, Universität Bayreuth

    Veröffentlichung

    Siebert, Johannes U. “Can Novices Create Alternatives of the Same Quality as Experts?”, Decision Analysis (INFORMS) 2016, 13(4), 278-291, https://doi.org/10.1287/deca.2016.0339

    The quality of alternatives is crucial for making good decisions. The process of generating high-quality alternatives can be enhanced by using decision makers’ objectives as prompts. This paper examines empirically the impact and interrelation of experience and the prompting with objectives on decision makers’ ability to create alternatives for an important decision. The study confirms with high significance that both experience and prompting with objectives enhance the quality of alternatives. We are able to show that all participants, irrespective of their experience, enhance the quality of their alternatives when they are prompted with objectives; i.e., the relationship between being prompted with objectives and the quality of alternatives is not moderated by experience. In contrast to gaining experience, prompting a participant with objectives can be utilized immediately without a long learning phase and is able to substitute for experience in certain decision contexts. Furthermore, we analyze how prompting with objectives affects the creation of alternatives. We find evidence that the relation between being prompted with objectives and the quality of alternatives is partially mediated by the number of objectives considered while creating alternatives.

  • A Media-Specific Balanced Scorecard Based on Value-Focused Thinking

    A Media-Specific Balanced Scorecard Based on Value-Focused Thinking

    Dr. Johannes Siebert, Universität Bayreuth

    Veröffentlichung

    Kunz, Reinhard; Siebert, Johannes U.; Mütterlein, Joschka. „A Media-Specific Balanced Scorecard Based on Value-Focused Thinking“, Journal of Media Business Studies, 13(4), 2016, 257-275. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/16522354.2016.1220114

    Objectives are fundamental to strategic management. However, while research exists on objectives of media companies, we know little about the relationships between them. In order to advance research in this field, we used value-focused thinking to investigate the objectives of a media company and the balanced scorecard as a framework to demonstrate their relationships.

    In interviews with 23 managers and employees of a German medium-sized local newspaper company, we found 698 distinct objectives and 1009 relationships. By concentrating on the most important objectives, we derived a balanced scorecard with 33 objectives and 65 relationships organised in seven perspectives. The results were then validated in a second case study on a Czech national media group.