Interactive Decision Making: The Graph Model for Conflict Resolution Hardback - - 1st Edition

The graph model approach to conflict resolution is a flexible tool for use in strategic management within a competitive environment. Developed over an eight-year period by three of Canada's most distinguished systems design theorists, it is a mathematically rigorous, comprehensive approach to the study and resolution of real-world disputes. Interactive Decision Making is a careful, detailed, and systematic articulation of the theory and practice of the graph model approach. Based upon ideas from both graph theory and game theory, the theory of the graph model for conflicts offers several distinct advantages. It can handle any finite number of decision makers, each of whom controls any finite number of actions. The graph model can describe and distinguish reversible and irreversible moves (the effects of armed actions, for instance, cannot usually be undone). Most importantly, the graph model forms a solid framework upon which solution concepts for describing human behavior can be defined, assessed, and compared. This book is accompanied by a diskette, which is explained and illustrated in an appendix. In addition, the text provides a summary of how to apply the graph model to practical problems, as well as a plain language explanation to bring mathematical results and their implications into focus for the general reader. Each chapter concludes with a set of problems, which serve to clarify important points and ensure comprehension. This book is an invaluable new tool for researchers, consultants, teachers, and students who wish to study real-world conflicts. It is also destined to become an indispensable resource for professionals such as systems engineers, business administrators, environmental engineers, management scientists, operations research specialists, political scientists, labor-management negotiators, and military scientists.