Thesis Title: The War Room Effects Model (WREM): A Parametric Model for the Optimization of Organizationally Supported Decision Making According to the Personality of Decision Makers

Advisors:

Dr. David Goldsman & Dr. William Rouse (ISYE)

Committee Members:

Dr. Howard Weiss (School of Psychology)

Dr. John-Paul Clark (ISYE)

Dr. Abdullah Alabdulkarim (Majmaah University, Saudi Arabia)

Date and Time: Friday, February 28th 2020, 1:30 pm

Location: Groseclose 304

Abstract:

This thesis proposes the War Room Effects Model (WREM) and its accompanying system of situational control as a concept for the optimization of organizationally supported decisions according to the personality of the decision maker.

Concepts and components of the PEN model of personality, the Affect Infusion Model, the Vroom-Yetton model, Situational Strength and the Yerkes-Dodson law provided the theoretical basis for the establishment of WREM as a conceptual model. Two experiments supported the identification of key sources of performance variance in the context of hypothetical decision-making scenarios. The first of these strongly supported acceptance of WREM’s core personality and situational factors as important sources of performance variance. The second experiment generally confirmed the significance of WREM’s core factors and further indicated that the preponderance of performance variability resulted from key interactions between personality and situational factors. This directly supported the conditional validation of WREM as a parametric model.

Response surface analysis and model optimization led to the identification of personality-aligned optimization solutions as a system of situational control. Stochastic simulation of this system indicated dramatic improvements to decision-making performance across the examined ranges of WREM’s personality factors.

By practically and holistically accounting for personality and situational factors in an economical theory and model, WREM advances our basic understanding of the dynamic interaction between these factors and their cumulative effects on cognitive performance. This research concludes by proposing WREM as the subject of further basic and applied research and presents a draft concept for its implementation and application to industry.