| Summary: | 博士 === 國立中山大學 === 公共事務管理研究所 === 92 === In a plural democratic society, the macro phenomena and policies are formed by individual cognition and choices. Thus the field of decision-making and judgment analysis based on individual cognitions has become the major analytical method in the public affairs management. The citizenship view of the republicanism requires citizens to reach consensus. The group decision-making method is so helpful for reaching consensus and overcoming the limits of individual cognition that it’s necessary in forming public policies.
By reviewing various group decision-making methods, the study found that there are at least Program Planning Method (PPM; Delbecq & Van de Ven, 1971), Policy Delphi (Turoff, 1970), Interactive Management(IM; Warfield & Cárdenas, 1994), and Social Judgment Theory(SJT; Hammond, 1965, 1996; Hammond et al., 1975, 1977, 1980) can be used to reach consensus in a plural society. Among them, the IM results have been proven effective for solving complicated problems and compliant with citizen participation spirit of a plural society ( Wang Min-shen & Chang Ning, 2002; Warfield & Cárdenas, 1994) . However, the accuracy of IM results can not be proven by the method and the weight between factors can not be identified, either. SJT can be used to analyze the assumption between decision criteria of different hierarchies and obtain the weights between different factors out of the same result so that SJT can examine the annotated graphics of IM. Besides, since SJT emphasizes cognitive feedback, it can facilitate reaching consensus by comparing various stakeholders’ judgment principles dissolving the cognitive conflicts.
Thus the study applied theoretical SJT to examine the validity of IM results. I discussed SJT procedure in a collective, hierarchic and large-scaled way. The study also adopted classic experimental design to compare the cognitive changes of participants before and after the SJT procedure to explore the performance of SJT results of group decision-making in public affairs cases in terms of consistency, individual learning effect and satisfaction.
The results of this study show that SJT procedure can be operated in a large-scaled way while consensus with high satisfaction will be reached. In addition, the theoretical validity of IM results on psychological cognition provides the reason why participants accepted the results. Talking about the changes of the participants’ cognition through SJT procedure, the participants using SJT have not improved their consistency, while the learning effect changes significantly towards group conclusion. In the subjective evaluations such as satisfaction, learning effect and caring degree, the participants who use SJT are better than those who don’t, but not better than those who use IM procedure.
In terms of policy significance, though the covert consistency between the participants who use SJT has not been improved, their overt satisfaction towards the group conclusion is better than those who don’t. It shows that the conflict between participants has not disappeared yet, while they accept the consensus. Therefore, the way to wipe away the conflicts in a plural society is not to build up a single exclusive value, but to design a procedure allowing the stakeholders accept consensus.
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