Extending the use of scenario planning and MCDA for the evaluation of strategic options

Abstract

Multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) is well equipped to deal with conflicting, qualitative objectives when evaluating strategic options. Scenario planning provides a framework for confronting uncertainty, which MCDA lacks. Integration of these methods offers various advantages, yet its effective application in evaluating strategic options would benefit from scenarios that reflect a larger number of wide-ranging scenarios developed in a time-efficient manner, as well as incorporation of MCDA measures that inform within and across scenario comparison of options. The main contribution of this paper is to illustrate how a more diverse set of scenarios could be developed quickly, and to investigate how regret could be used to facilitate comparison of options. First, the reasons for these two areas of development are elaborated with respect to existing techniques. The impacts of applying the proposed method in practice are then assessed through a case study involving food security in Trinidad and Tobago. The paper concludes with a discussion of findings and areas for further research.

Aggregation of Priorities in Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA): Connecting Decision Spaces in the Cognitive Space

“…Then, one can compute an overall error estimate for aggregate normalised priorities. In cases a) and b), once a set of values are chosen for p n s s, their successive values (i.e., for addition or deletion of an alternative) are restricted by the recursion relations given in Equation (14) and Equation (16). These equations manifest reasoning that links the decision spaces in the cognitive space of the decision problem (see Section 5 below for more).…”

“…The idea of scenario has been discussed for over 40 years (see [15] for some early references) in the context of strategic decision making in many areas of applications including the MCDA (see [16] and [17] and references therein). Huss [15] called a scenario "a narrative description of a consistent set of factors that define in a probabilistic sense alternative sets of future business conditions" and discussed its application to forecasting.…”

“…In this example, they kept the number of alternatives and criteria across scenarios unchanged but preferences were assigned in the context of the scenarios. Ram 326 S. Zahir et al [16] considered a case where the number of alternatives and criteria were unchanged but their preferences were varied across scenarios for improved evaluation of strategic options. In our case, we got the correct aggregation rule (MAR) that avoided rank reversals as the number of criteria and their weights were unchanged but another alternative was added or deleted.…”

Cynefin: uncertainty, small worlds and scenarios

“…The combination of scenario planning and multi-criteria decision analysis has been a frequent focus (Wright and Goodwin, 1999;Montibeller et al, 2006;Ram et al, 2011;Schroeder and Lambert, 2011;Stewart et al, 2013). Williamson and Goldstein (2012) show how statistical emulation techniques can make the analysis of large complex decision trees tractable and also indicate how their methods can be integrated with scenario planning.…”

Mapeamento do estado da arte do tema sustentabilidade ambiental direcionado para a tecnologia de informação

“…A ciência tem mostrado que para enfrentar tais problemas é recomendado o uso de abordagens prescritivistas e construtivistas em detrimento das abordagens normativistas e descretivistas (Roy, 1993). Muitas são as aplicações de métodos de Avaliação de Desempenho que evidenciam o uso de abordagens construtivistas no referido contexto (Ensslin et al, 2000;Ensslin et al, 2010;Moraes et al, 2010;Tasca et al, 2010;Azevedo et al, 2011;Lacerda et al, 2011;Ram et al, 2011;Ensslin et al, 2012;Rosa et al, 2012). Para essas situações, a avaliação de desempenho tem sido definida como o conhecimento necessário para apreciação de um fato, de uma ideia, de um objetivo ou de um resultado e, também, a base para a tomada de decisão em contextos não bem estruturados, conflituosos e incertos (Ensslin et al, 2010).…”