The Linguistic Generalized OWA Operator and its Application in Strategic Decision Making

We introduce the linguistic generalized ordered weighted averaging (LGOWA) operator. It is a new aggregation operator that uses linguistic information and generalized means in the OWA operator. It is very useful for uncertain situations where the available information can not be assessed with numerical values but it is possible to use linguistic assessments. This aggregation operator generalizes a wide range of aggregation operators that use linguistic information such as the linguistic generalized mean (LGM), the linguistic weighted generalized mean (LWGM), the linguistic OWA (LOWA) operator, the linguistic ordered weighted geometric (LOWG) operator and the linguistic ordered weighted quadratic averaging (LOWQA) operator. We also introduce a new type of Quasi-LOWA operator by using quasi-arithmetic means in the LOWA operator. Finally, we develop an application of the new approach. We analyze a decision making problem about selection of strategies.