VARIABILITY OF DECISIONAL ABILITY AND THE ESSENTIAL ORDER OF DECISIONRULES

The paper examines how the optimal decision rule changes as one varies the decision-making ability of a group of individuals who have common preferences over two alternatives but who potentially differ in their ability to detect and identify the better alternative. The analysis i s restricted to sets of rules which possess the property of an essenti al order. The main finding is that when the team members do not have t heir full 'competency' for choosing the better alternative, the optima l decision rule approaches the simple majority rule via the different stages on the ladder of the essential order.