From Values to Ordinal Preferences for Strategic Governance

A systems methodology for generating ordinal preferences from a value system is presented in this paper. The methodology employs value-focused thinking, the analytic hierarchy process, and a variety of methods, such as criteria-satisficing, optimizing, prioritization and weighting, to capture different value judgments. The methodology is operationalized for integration with the graph model for conflict resolution, which facilitates modeling and analysis of strategic conflicts. In applying the proposed methodology, preferences take into account evolving contextual variables in order to simulate participants´ responses in a dynamic environment. The effects of different value systems on preferences and resulting conflict dynamics are demonstrated for a theoretical common-pool resources dilemma.