Aggregating Multidimensional Criteria in Audit Decision Making

Abstract

Measuring total performance of prospective alternatives in decision making (DM) needs aggregation of their noncomparable properties which often have different scales of measure. In order to address this, scale transformations and normalization are applied, but problems of validation of such additive models and interpretation of the physical sense of the result arise. In this paper, a multiplicative performance aggregation of properties' values is suggested for DM. Application of the approach enables consistent and unambiguous ranking of the alternatives allowing values of all their properties of interest. A realistic example of DM related to audit activity planning is considered where several competing control areas should be selected into an audit plan. Beyond audit planning, the approach is generalizable to other DM problems in corporate management and governance where one needs to rank alternatives compared in multiple dimensions.