The Development and Application of a Multiple Criteria Model to Creating Teams

In many educational and professional environments, multiple-talent teams are created to solve problems requiring different skill sets. In these environments there may be several teams constructed to attack different problems. In the educational setting this may be to conduct a learning project while in a work setting this may be to develop a new product. Teams are usually constructed from "players" in different functional departments. Since the "best" player in each department can't be on all of the teams, constructing teams so that all teams function effectively is a challenging process. This paper describes a multiple criteria model for a team selection problem that balances skill sets among the groups and varies the composition of the teams from period to period. The results of applying this team selection model to a cohort-structured Executive MBA (EMBA) program and to team selection in a Fortune 100 corporation are presented.

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