A Case Study of Decision-Making: Fair Division

Background

As mentioned on previous pages, scholars from a number of fields have extensively studied decision-making. For scholars in public relations there is a natural connection between decision-making and persuasion. Indeed, the goal of these lessons has been to illustrate both what goes into ethical decision making, and how to use what we know about decision making to identify the preferences and values of others to make better decisions, and achieve organizational goals. Thus, understanding decision-making and ethics goes hand-in-hand.

Issue

There are too many decision-making theories and principles to review them all in a single short module, however, one area that might shed light on the process of decision making, and an area that was not discussed above, is an area called “Fair Division” (Brams & Taylor, 1996; Brams, 2003).

Dilemma

The task of dividing up something fairly is a common organizational activity that has roots going back to ancient history and King Solomon’s threat to divide a baby. Organizations make decisions about division when they merge with other companies, managers make decisions about how to award bonuses or merit pay, how to assign shifts to hourly workers, etc. But the question of how to divide something fairly and equitably, and in a way that makes no one jealous of what others have received, or resentful at the outcome, is difficult. What Brams and Taylor have done is to study the process of division and try to identify some relevant heuristics.

Consequences

The most common form of “fair division” is something called “divide and choose.” Simply put, two people are sharing something, say a piece of cake, and want to divide the piece exactly in the middle. One time tested approach is for one person to divide and the other person to choose. Thus, assuming both parties like cake, the cake cutter will do his/her best to divide the cake exactly in the middle, while the cake chooser will try to pick the piece that s/he believes is larger. Thus, both parties do their best to maximize their preferences, and in the end, both should be pleased about the outcome.

Brams and Taylor describe other principles that are important to understand including: “envy-freeness” (not envying the other for getting more) and “proportionality” (taking into account how something must be divided when there are multiple items to divide, and/or more than two parties involved). Proportionality is also a more difficult issue because when complicated and diverse assists are being divided, much like Solomon’s baby, they cannot simply be divided down the middle. With complex divisional issues, personal preference also comes into play. A savvy participant might, recognizing the preferences of the other party, be able to create a division of assets that while not numerically equal in terms of dollars, actually satisfies both parties involved.

Brams and Taylor describe a real-life situation in which divide and choose is actually played out:

Divide-and-choose has important applications today. For example, the 1982 Convention of the Law of the Sea, which went into effect on November 16, 1994 with 159 signatories (including the United States), specifies that whenever a developed country wants to mine a portion of the seabed, that country must propose a division of the portion into two tracts. An international mining company called the Enterprise, funded by the developed countries but representing the interests of the developing countries through the International Seabed Authority, plays the role of the other party, choosing the tract it prefers; the developed country receives the other tract. In this manner, parts of the seabed arc preserved for commercial development by the developing countries . . . (p. 10)

What this example illustrates is that the process of decision-making, or ethics, is not a simple process. As Brams and Taylor point out, in the case of policy documents and legislation,

A crucial difference between divide-and-choose in cake cutting and its application in the legislative process is that the divider does not get one piece and the chooser another. Instead, they both share the same piece—the bill that is eventually passed, or the status quo if it is not. (p. 13)

Moral of the Story

The point of this case is to help clarify the importance of understanding complicated processes like decision-making and ethics. The more knowledge and skills that a communication professional possesses the better equipped s/he will be to achieve his/her organization’s goals. Understanding how decisions are made, as well as why they fail (e.g., Groupthink, decision making by objection, etc.), or that a variety of ethical orientations exist, give informed and prepared group members an advantage over those who simply show up to the meeting.