Structured decision‐making in the presence of conflicting goals is difficult, and even more so when accounting for uncertainties in the goals or constraints. In this article, we propose a new approach to multi‐criteria decision‐making that extends the deterministic preemptive goal programming approach to account for such uncertainties. The uncertainties may be characterized in various ways including a Bayesian network or extensive Monte Carlo multi‐variate output. We contend the proposed stochastic preemptive goal programming approach is particularly applicable when better goal achievement increases uncertainty or induces risk to other goals. Resulting solutions tend to be a balance of the goals' achievements and robust to minor changes to the goals or constraints. We demonstrate the approach using three illustrative examples: a univariate example, a bivariate example, and a stock portfolio optimization example along with an application to determine military requests for absence. Our preliminary results suggest that a stochastic preemptive goal programming approach represents an effective means of analysing multi‐criteria decision‐making problems under uncertainty.

Education is a frequent area of concern when attempting to improve organizational performance. In this paper, absorbing Markov chains were used to assess education levels of civil servants within Air Force Materiel Command (AFMC). The results suggest that AFMC will have 47% of its workforce with an advanced, college degree by the year 2030. Given an increasingly educated workforce within AFMC, ethical implications for management strategy were explored. Specifically, the authors examined the ethics of managing a highly-educated workforce in ways which are procedurally similar to those used for a workforce which was historically less educated. Through a thematic bifurcation, ethical solutions were presented which will either provide more autonomy for the highly-educated workforce or attempt to change the internal credentialing process so that the current management strategies are aligned to a more appropriately-educated workforce.

Education is a frequent area of concern when attempting to improve organizational performance. In this paper, absorbing Markov chains were used to assess education levels of civil servants within Air Force Materiel Command (AFMC). The results suggest that AFMC will have 47% of its workforce with an advanced, college degree by the year 2030. Given an increasingly educated workforce within AFMC, ethical implications for management strategy were explored. Specifically, the authors examined the ethics of managing a highly-educated workforce in ways which are procedurally similar to those used for a workforce which was historically less educated. Through a thematic bifurcation, ethical solutions were presented which will either provide more autonomy for the highly-educated workforce or attempt to change the internal credentialing process so that the current management strategies are aligned to a more appropriately-educated workforce.