Role Thinking: Standing in Other People's Shoes to Forecast Decisions in Conflicts

Summary:
This article published in 2011 by Kesten Green, Senior Lecturer at Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science at the University of South Australia and Scott Armstrong, Professor of Marketing at The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania highlights the significant differences between simulated interactions and a term they coined "role thinking" on the accuracy of decision forecasts in novel situations. They used an experimental design to conclude that asking groups of people to think about the roles and interactions influencing the reactions of a protagonist in a given novel conflict situation to forecast protagonist decisions is an ineffective forecasting technique. Forecasts from role thinking are unlikely to be accurate due to the difficulty of analyzing complex interactions between different protagonists with different roles in a manner that accurately represents the conflict in the absence of experiencing the complex interactions. 

Note that the authors prefer the term "simulated interaction" instead of "role playing" to refer to the method of forecasting people's decisions by simulating the situation using interacting role players because the term "role playing" is used to refer to various techniques with purposes other than forecasting. The authors find that simulated interactions provide much better forecasting accuracy than unaided judgment and role thinking, particularly in novel conflict situations.

Evidence from previous findings indicate that much better forecasting accuracy for the decisions the protagonist in a given novel conflict situation will make is attained by prompting groups of people to adopt roles in addition to simulating the interactions between protagonist groups with divergent interests. The decision the protagonists in each group elect to make in the simulated interaction is taken as a forecast of the actual protagonist's decision. The authors highlight that simulating novel conflict situations faced by divergent protagonists using interacting role playing members solves the absence of experience problem according to prior research from the same authors using the same conflicts utilized in this experiment. 

The authors tested role thinking in an experimental design consisting of forecasts for the decisions of the protagonist of a given conflict from an expert sample and a novice sample. The accuracy of the role thinking forecasts were compared to chance in addition to the accuracy of unaided judgment and simulated interactions from previous studies utilizing the same conflict scenarios. The authors obtained 101 role thinking forecasts for nine conflicts from 27 Naval postgraduate students (the expert sample) and 107 role thinking forecasts from 103 second year organizational behavior students (the novice sample). The results are illustrated below: 

http://tinyurl.com/oeebksr

The average forecasting accuracy from the novice sample and the expert sample were only marginally better than chance, which was 28% versus the 33% accuracy from the novice forecasts and the 31% accuracy from the expert forecasts. Previous research from Green and Armstrong using the same conflict situations found forecasting accuracy of 60% when using the simulated interaction method instead of the role thinking method.

In the role thinking experiments, participants were provided with descriptions of some or all of the situations and of all the associated roles. Participants were prompted to predict what actions each party in the situation would prefer and assess how likely it is that each party's preferred decision will actually occur. Each prompt had a list of between three and six decisions that the researchers believed could plausibly have been made in each situation. 

In previous simulated interaction experiments with forecasting accuracy of 60%, participants were divided into groups and assigned information only on their own role. Participants were prompted to read their role description, put on a name badge for the role, and adopt the role for the duration of the simulation. Participants were free to meet with others as often as they would like to reach a decision. Each group's decision was taken as a forecast of the actual protagonist's decision. In addition to the 60% accuracy finding, the forecasts from simulated interactions were more accurate than the role thinking forecasts for all nine conflict situations. The authors also point out that neither statistical nor casual models have been found to be feasible for predicting decisions people make in novel conflict situations therefore decision makers rely on judgmental methods.

Critique: 
The forecasts from the role thinking experiment were derived from individuals while the forecasts from the simulated interaction experiments were derived from group forecasts. The authors acknowledge that a key assumption driving their analysis of the ineffectiveness of role thinking versus simulated interactions is that forecasting accuracy from group role thinking forecasts would differ little from the individual role thinking forecasts in this experiment due to both unaided judgment and role thinking forecasts differing little from chance. One way to test this assumption is implementing an experiment where different groups of participants arrive at a group forecast using role thinking then comparing those results to the simulated interaction experiments. This would also be a more consistent representation of what occurs when a group of people are tasked to engage in role thinking together on a team. 

In Table 2, the expert sample in the unaided judgment experiments and the expert sample in the role thinking experiment are qualitatively different in that the unaided judgment expert sample participants were from academia and professional conflict management and forecasting organizations while the expert sample participants in the role thinking experiment were Naval postgraduate students. However, the authors point out that there is little evidence that top experts can perform judgmental tasks better than generalists. In addition, the naval postgraduates had experience in conflicts over pay negotiations and commercial takeovers, the authors suggest that knowledge of conflicts from one domain is likely to transfer over to other domains involving predicting human behavior in conflict situations. 

One thing I did not see addressed is best practice for developing effective scenarios, roles, and choices for simulated interactions when the conflict being assessed is a current event. I estimate that the procedures for developing effective simulated interactions is as much an art as it is a science, especially when the simulated scenario in question is a model of a current novel situation where incomplete or intentionally deceptive information is an issue. Using simulated interactions with current conflicts and events as opposed to historical situations where the outcome is known by the developers of the simulated interaction in advance adds a layer of complexity to developing the simulation interaction requiring further study. 

Source- 
Green, K. and Armstrong, J.S. (2011). Role Thinking: Standing in Other People's Shoes to Forecast Decisions in Conflicts. International Journal of Forecasting. Vol. 27(1). p. 69-80.

Nobody Left Behind: Report on Exemplary and Best Practices in Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Response For People with Disabilities

Description
The Nobody Left Behind(NLB)study was developed to evaluate the preparedness of emergency management sites and their ability to assist persons with mobility impairments. A portion of the NLB study was designed to determine the exemplary and emerging best practices. Data collected for the study came from telephone surveys of site emergency managers, and through the review of local emergency plans.

Exemplary Practices
Out of the 30 sites surveyed, six were identified as having exemplary practices.These six sites were evenly divided between rural and urban settings. The six sites were determined to have exemplary practices through the cumulative effect of policies and procedures at place in the facilities and their communities.

Exemplary Practices:
1. Administering and maintaining a surveillance system, usually a self-identified registry system of persons needing assistance during a disaster or emergency.
2. Identifying accessible transportation vehicles and guidelines to evacuate persons with disabilities needing assistance.
3. Establishing a so called special medical needs shelter.
4. Conducting training and exercises on evacuation of persons with disabilities.

Emerging Best Practices
Analysis of policies from the 30 surveyed sites determined a number of evolving best practices. The practices were determined through research and recommendations from policy experts, advisors, and consultants. This analysis of policy and practices determined three emerging best practices.

Emerging Best Practices:
1. Comprehensive planning for persons with disabilities in the local emergency management plan.
2. Comprehensive planning tool using surveillance and consumer education.
3. Day to day surveillance and consumer education outreach.

Conclusion
This study attempts to understand best practices for emergency management relating to persons with disabilities. The effects of the study were limited by the size of the surveyed population. Practices may not be effective for feasible in certain situations.

White Paper: Best Practices in Emergency Alerting

Summary
This White Paper developed by Rave Wireless is designed to assist colleges and universities in their emergency management practices. The paper provides an initial overview of the fundamentals of emergency management practices. After establishing these fundamentals, the paper goes on to underline the best practices in emergency preparedness and establishing a communication/alert system for a college or university community.Additionally, the article provides templates for internal assessment.

Emergency Preparedness Best Practices
The initial pages of the article provide a number of Best Practices in Emergency Management for colleges and universities. These best practices focus on internal assessment to improve the effectiveness of emergency preparedness programs. This assessment is formed from successful practices used by other colleges and universities.

Best practices in Emergency Preparedness:Strategic Planning
-Assess and rank threats
-Identify prevention methods
-Define what constitutes and emergency
-Identify constituents and their roles
-Conduct assessments of situation and assess resource gaps
-Define scenarios and time lines for completing plans

Communication Plan Practices
Similar to the papers presentation on preparedness best practices, the article also provides best practices for implementing an emergency communication plan. Practices outlined are based on both company technical recommendations and practices employed by other colleges and universities. These practices relate to aspects from the implementation of a system to post incident evaluation of the system.

Implementation
-Create communication processes, templates and approval procedures
-Define acceptable terms for emergency mass communications
-Determine target audience(s) specifics
-Identify the appropriate mode of communication for each audience
-Consider coverage and capacity limitations of your available communication modes
-Consider implementation of an inbound notification infrastructure
-Define coordination around the approval process in detail
-Establish policies for the frequency and level of communication
-Create message templates
-Identify alternates and back up plans
-Document and make plans easily accessible
-Communicate the plan to the campus and local community
-Internalize via Practice, Practice, Practice

Response
-Communicate truthfully and promptly, and communicate succinctly
-Be comfortable not over communicating
-Expect to be forced to make decisions based on incomplete information
-Organize your first responders
-Plan to utilize response features in your alert solution

Recovery
-Determine decisionmakers
-Provide a smooth transition from crisis to normal mode

Evaluation and Assessment
-Perform post-mortem analysis
-Utilize system self reporting

Evaluation
The article itself identifies that best practices used are unique and not always effective to parties utilizing them. Ideally practices in emergency management are designed to all target threats to communities, but often may not be able to address the rapidly changing nature of threats.

Physician Explanations For Failing To Comply With "Best Practices"

Introduction
As the title indicates, this article is devoted to improving physician based compliance with evidence-based guidelines. To get more specific, the primary objective of this paper was to examine why physicians don't follow known "best practices" when treating patients with type 2 diabetes.

Method
The research design for this study was a descriptive study based upon self-assessed compliance. The research team consisted of 85 internists who volunteered to aid in conducting the study. The physicians were queried by the internists sending out 7,000 randomly generated survey requests (using a professional organization) and 800 of the 7,000 expressed interest and 137 went on to complete the task. In completing the survey, the physicians simply reviewed their own charts for type 2 diabetes patients and then reported open-ended comments for the reasons they did not comply with known "best practices".

Results/Conclusion
For diabetes care measures, the "physician noncompliance was most common for screening urinalysis(26%) and screening microalbuminuria (46%)" among the five measures examined. When examining the physicians open-ended comments, the main issues that were cited for noncompliance were physician oversight, patient non adherence, and systems issues. Physicians did admit that sometimes there is a conscious decision made to not comply due to the patient's age, comorbid illness or other factors. The study concludes that "even among a self-selected group of physicians, noncompliance with best practices in diabetes is common" and that physicians often disagree about what constitutes "best practice".

Small Business Best Practice Benchmarking: How to Effectively Borrow Ideas, Strategies and Tactics

Darrell Zahorsky, a former Absolut.com Guide, wrote an article about how to use Best Practices for small businesses. He discusses what Best Practices is by saying "A best practice is the process of finding and using ideas and strategies from outside your company and industry to improve performance in any given area." He goes on to also mention that Best Practices has been used by big business in the past and that Best Practices is similar to benchmarking.

Zahorsky then explains that Best Practices can help a small business by allowing them to...

• Reduce costs
  
• Avoid mistakes
• Find new ideas
• Improve performance.

Zahorsky they describes that in order to successfully use Best Practices, a small business must first note the "ingredients" a successful competitor is using go improve. He notes that only by looking at the specific steps a competitor makes to succeed can you "bake the cake."

In order to apply Best Practices, Zahorksy gives a list of steps to use.

• Identify one business process or service to improve. (Product delivery)
• Look for one metric to measure. (Late Shipment %)
• Find competitors and companies within your industry and outside your industry. (FedEx)
• Collect information on the successful, best practices of other companies. (FedEx spoke and hub system)
• Modify the best practice for your situation. (Have one retail store per city act as central hub for shipments.)
• Implement the process then measure the results.

Best Practice In Performance Reporting In Natural Resource Management

Introduction
Published in 1997 by the Department of Natural Resources and Environment - Victoria, this article is chiefly about the progress of "outcome based management" of natural resources in Australian park management agencies. According to the paper, the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat (1996) provides a good definition for best practices sharing which is the "capture, dissemination and sharing of a work method, process or initiative to improve organizational effectiveness, service delivery and employee satisfaction".

Method
From here, the article says that a literature review was performed and a questionnaire was created and distributed. The questionnaire was passed out to an officer in all State and Territory protected area management agencies as well as to the Australian National Parks and Wildlife Service. The purpose of the survey was five-fold looking into: 1)to examine the degree of which performance reporting was used by agencies, 2)determine the methods that were used, 3)assess the extent of ecological monitoring programs, 4)examine any "State Of the Environment (SOE)" reporting for performance reporting, 5)investigate best practices in activity bases monitoring.

As a result of the questionnaire and literature review, the researchers determined that there was very little information on best practices in regards to natural resource management in parks, however interest is growing in this subject area.

Developing A Framework Of The Best Practice Model For Natural Resource Management
The last wholly relevant piece of this article was the focus on the development of a best practice model that fits in with the natural resource management focus. A number of criteria were laid out for the development of a best practice model based upon Australian and international approaches. These criteria included:

1)a clear nexus between an agency's legislative requirements and its strategic objectives for natural resource management
2)clearly stated management goals that are derived directly from strategic objectives
3)a plan of natural resource management programs and activities at both the agency and the park level for meeting the strategic objectives within a specified time-frame (both medium term and annual)
4)performance indicators and targets against which the degree to which goals were achieved can be assessed, at both the agency and the park level
5)natural resource monitoring programs that provide data for the assessment of performance indicators

In conclusion, none of the agencies assessed in Australia nor elsewhere, meet all of the aforementioned criteria for best practice analysis in regards to natural resource management

SEO "Best Practices" Are Bunk

In an article on Search Engine Land, Adam Audette describes how the Best Practices model is not worth using in search engine optimization (SEO). Audette gives a brief background as to how Best Practices was started in the mid 1990's, and then begins to discuss how the methodology fails when being used for SEOs. Audette claims specifically that the entire basis of Best Practices, which is based on using a specific rule set, used throughout an organization to follow a certain procedure to achieve the "best" practice, is incompatible with how SEO is currently being used.

Aduette then explains the negatives of Best Practices for SEOs;
"By their very nature, best practices are rule-sets that are standardized and formalized procedures. There is no competitive advantage in having best practices, at least in SEO. There is only a summation of basic webmastering (e.g., place relevant keywords in the title tag, make pages semantic and relevant, etc). That’s simply not cutting it anymore, because frankly, that stuff represents the basic price of admission. Best practices are neutered, stale and massively reproduced conventions that have been used (and sometimes abused) to the point of ubiquity. SEO and ubiquity don’t mix. By definition, a best practice:
1-Is a static rule-set
2-Is a standard to be followed has worked in the past (read: is old)
3-Has been popularized (read: is average)
4-Limits judgement, evaluation, and strategy (cornerstones of quality search marketing)."


Strengths:

• Is a set of rules that can be taught

• Can be employed throughout an organization to improve multiple areas

Weaknesses:

• Not dynamic

• Doesn't work in overly competitive constantly changing industries