Holistically addressing uncertainty in group decision-making: the case of a 'quasi-collaborative' group structure

Abstract

This paper presents a methodology that holistically captures the uncertainty of judgment in 'quasi-collaborative' group decision-making in the context of the analytic hierarchy/network process. The proposed method is motivated mainly by the two uncertainty approaches that seemingly diverge in literature: the simulation approach and the fuzzy set theory (FST) approach. In the proposed method, FST is used to handle the judgmental uncertainty of individual decision-maker while simulation addresses randomness and uncertainty when individual judgments are aggregated as a group decision. An illustrative problem is presented in this paper along with a numerical experiment that attempts to compare the efficacy of the proposed methodology with existing methods. Results show that the method is more capable of handling uncertain group decisions through simulation runs and it can perform sensitivity analysis which is essential in testing robustness of judgment results. Finally, the proposed method can identify non-expert member of the group.