A technique of the salient success and survival aspiration levels for multiple objective/criteria decision-making problems

Abstract

This paper proposes a new technique of how to get as close as possible to the salient success aspiration level and how to get as far as possible from the survival aspiration level simultaneously, to resolve the multiple objective/criteria decision-making problems. Management implications are addressed, to understand the role of salient success and survival aspirations in multiple objective/criteria decision-making problems. An illustrative example is provided to demonstrate the veracity of the proposed method that involves a formulation of both salient success and survival aspiration levels using the binary goal programming. In addition, the proposed method uses a membership (utility) function to improve the utilisation of goal programming so as to approach decision-makers’ preferences as close as possible. A real problem is also provided to demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed method.

Keywords:

• Goal programming
• membership function
• aspiration levels
• multiple objective decision-making problem