Multiple criteria group decision making based on group satisfaction

Abstract To generate solutions to multiple criteria group decision-making (MCGDM) problems that are satisfactory to the decision makers, this paper proposes a new method. To examine whether a group solution is satisfactory to the decision makers, group satisfaction is constructed from alternative assessment and ranking differences between the decision makers and the group. The difference between a decision maker's assessment and a group's assessment is designed based on differences in assessment grades, whose normalization is theoretically proven to construct alternative assessment differences. Inspired by Spearman's rank correlation coefficient, the expected utilities of decision makers’ and the group's assessments are used to construct alternative ranking differences. An abstract two-variable function with specific properties is designed to relate alternative assessment difference to alternative ranking difference to form group satisfaction. From the constructed group satisfaction, the process of generating group-satisfactory solutions to MCGDM problems is presented. The problem of selecting engineering project management software is analyzed by using the proposed method to demonstrate its applicability. To highlight the importance of group satisfaction in MCGDM, relationships and differences between group satisfaction and group consensus are analyzed through the problem and simulation experiments.