Social choice theory and distributed decision making
Arnold B. Urken · ACM SIGOIS Bulletin · 1988
Strategies of distributed decision making based on social choice theory can be used to create a balance between organizational complexity and uncertainty. Although Group Decision Support Systems (GDSS's) have included options for making human collective choices, their design has not been based on optimal rules. Social choice theory can also be used to improve the reliability of decisions made by nodes in distributed computer networks. Three examples illustrate the application of this theory: human computer-mediated distributed decision making, electing a coordinator to reorganize a failed distributed network, and using weighted votes to improve network reliability.