This monograph is intended for an advanced undergraduate or graduate
course of engineering and management science. as well as for persons in
business. industry. military or in any field. who want an introductory
and a capsule look into the methods of group decision making under
multiple criteria. This is a sequel to our previous works entitled
"Multiple Objective Decision Making--Methods and Applications (No. 164
of the Lecture Notes). and "Multiple Attribute Decision Making--Methods
and Applications (No. 186 of the Lecture Notes). Moving from a single
decision maker (the consideration of Lecture Notes 164 and 186) to a
multiple decision maker setting introduces a great deal of complexity
into the analysis. The problem is no longer the selection of the most
preferred alternative among the nondominated solutions according to one
individual's (single decision maker's) preference structure. The
analysis is extended to account for the conflicts among different
interest groups who have different objectives. goals. and so forth.
Group decision making under multiple criteria includes such diverse and
interconnected fields as preference analysis. utility theory. social
choice theory. committee decision theory. theory of voting. game theory.
expert evaluation analysis. aggregation of qualitative factors. economic
equilibrium theory. etc; these are simplified and systematically
classified for beginners. This work is to provide readers with a capsule
look into the existing methods. their characteristics. and applicability
in the complexity of group decision making.
