So how to make group decisions? : arrow's impossibility theorem 70 years after

Purpose - In 1951, Kenneth Arrow proved that it is not possible to have a group decision-making procedure that satisfies reasonable requirements like fairness. From the theoretical viewpoint, this is a great result - welldeserving the Nobel Prize that was awarded to Professor Arrow. However, from the practical viewpoint, the question remains - so how should we make group decisions? A usual way to solve this problem is to provide some reasonable heuristic ideas, but the problem is that different seemingly reasonable idea often lead to different group decision - this is known, e.g. for different voting schemes. Design/methodology/approach - In this paper we analyze this problem from the viewpoint of decision theory, the basic theory underlying all our activities – including economic ones. Findings - We show how from the first-principles decision theory, we can extract explicit recommendations for group decision making. Originality/value - Most of the resulting recommendations have been proposed earlier. The main novelty of this paper is that it provides a unified coherent narrative that leads from the fundamental first principles to practical recommendations.