Sborník 2009 díl 2. - Fakulta informatiky a managementu - Univerzita ...

Hana Mohelská, Petr Tučník MULTICRITERIAL DECISION-MAKING CAN DRIVE STRATEGY
(data) may be enormous and it may be difficult to make such complex decisions without
computer.
The amount of information and speed of decision making are, in general, two main
reasons to use computer support when making any strategic decisions. When the
decision making process manifests similarities, then the whole process or its part may
be done by the computer. It is possible to have a set of pre-defined decision making
scenarios and use computer to handle such situations. This allows management staff to
focus their attention to special situations only and ease their workload.
One of the frequently used approaches to the decision making problems is the
multicriterial decision making (MDM). This approach allows us to take an enormous
amount of influences into consideration while making decision. The mathematical
background of the MDM is usually quite straightforward and simple because of the
need to avoid comprehensibility issues. The principles of MDM are described in [8] or
[2].
Evaluation and selection of strategies – the biggest managerial decision
Strategic decisions are taken at the highest level of an organization. They concern
decisions on how the whole organization will be positioned with respect to its product
and resource markets, its competitors and its macro influences. Accordingly, the options
at the strategic level are those that offer solutions to the “big questions” in this regard.
The big questions that are considered in strategic selection usually concern three major
areas:
1. Decisions on products and markets;
2. Decisions on generic strategy and scope;
3. Decisions on growth and development options
When considering which course of action to pursue, it is normally the case that a
number of options present themselves to an organization’s top management. In order to
ensure that the option is fairly and equally assessed, a number of criteria are applied.
For each option, four criteria are applied: questions to ask of each option. In order to
“pass”, the option must usually receive an affirmative answer to each one [5].
The four criteria are:
1. Is the strategic option suitable?
2. Is the strategic option feasible?
3. Is the strategic option acceptable?
4. Will the strategic option enable the organization to achieve competitive
advantage?
Multicriterial Decision-Making
The MDM is generally used for decision support but it is possible to adapt it for the use
as a control algorithm in autonomous entities using artificial intelligence. For the
purpose of this text, we will use the term “agent” when referring to such autonomous
entities. The theoretical background for agents and artificial intelligence may be found
in [6], [7], [1] or [4].
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