A Modeling Methodology for Multiobjective Multistakeholder Decisions

anagementsciencescurrentlydonotoffera systematic approach to model thedynamics and effects of multiple stake-holders’ objectives on corporate decisions. The pur-pose of this article is to introduce a structured qualita-tive methodology that provides researchers with ameans to systematically model, analyze, and comparecases of context-rich, idiosyncratic organizationaldecisions that involve multiple sets of objectives ofmultiple and divergent stakeholders.The multiobjective multistakeholder decisionmodeling methodology consists of a stepwiseapproach for inferring organizational priorities bymodeling organizational objectives hierarchies. Anobjectives hierarchy classifies related, more specificsubsets of objectives into higher level categories ofbroader, more general objectives in a hierarchical treestructure. In the modeling methodology, we combinequalitative and structured elements to achieve twotraditionally exclusive research goals: retain a highlevel of the decision’s complexity and simultaneouslyprovidemeansforsystematiccomparisonswithinoneor among several decision cases. With this methodol-ogy, we aim to broaden the empirical base of stake-holder theory by expanding its methodologicalarsenal.The modeling methodology is nontraditional inthat it links two formerly distinct streams of research:(a) multiattribute decision analysis and, specifically,the objectives hierarchies method from decision anal-ysis (Keeney, 1992; von Neumann & Morgenstern,1947;vonWinterfeldt,1987)and(b)recentdescriptivedevelopments in the stakeholder literature (Freeman,1984; Mitchell, Agle, & Wood, 1997). The objectiveshierarchies method creates tree structures that orga-nize the objectives of a decision maker into related

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