Engineering Decision Making and Risk Management

Chapter 4Group Decision Making

Learning Objectives:

After studying this chapter, the reader will be able to do the following:

1. Use ranking as a group decision-making technique (Section 4.1).
2. Use the Kemeny–Young method as a group decision-making technique (Section 4.1).
3. Identify the strengths and weaknesses of ranking as a group decision-making technique (Section 4.1).
4. Use scoring as a group decision-making technique (Section 4.2).
5. Use majority judgment as a group decision-making technique (Section 4.2).
6. Identify the strengths and weaknesses of scoring as a group decision-making technique (Section 4.2).
7. Describe the implications of Arrow's impossibility theorem (Section 4.3).

Because engineers work in teams and committees and other situations in which the preferences of other persons influence a decision, they encounter group decision making. A group decision occurs when the individual decisions of the persons in a group are combined to make a collective decision. This assumes, as might be expected, that the members of the group individually agree to participate in the decision-making process and accept its results. The decision-making process to be used may be imposed by existing rules, precedents, or some other authority, or it may be chosen by the group.

In engineering firms, many decisions involve multiple people, but not all those decisions are group decisions. In some cases, when no other sources of data are available (or acquiring them is impractical), it may ...