9,358 research outputs found
A robust fuzzy possibilistic AHP approach for partner selection in international strategic alliance
The international strategic alliance is an inevitable solution for making competitive advantage and reducing the risk in today’s business environment. Partner selection is an important part in success of partnerships, and meanwhile it is a complicated decision because of various dimensions of the problem and inherent conflicts of stockholders. The purpose of this paper is to provide a practical approach to the problem of partner selection in international strategic alliances, which fulfills the gap between theories of inter-organizational relationships and quantitative models. Thus, a novel Robust Fuzzy Possibilistic AHP approach is proposed for combining the benefits of two complementary theories of inter-organizational relationships named, (1) Resource-based view, and (2) Transaction-cost theory and considering Fit theory as the perquisite of alliance success. The Robust Fuzzy Possibilistic AHP approach is a noveldevelopment of Interval-AHP technique employing robust formulation; aimed at handling the ambiguity of the problem and let the use of intervals as pairwise judgments. The proposed approach was compared with existing approaches, and the results show that it provides the best quality solutions in terms of minimum error degree. Moreover, the framework implemented in a case study and its applicability were discussed
Insights and experiences of students about the factors that enhance relational pedagogy in higher education
This study examines the insights and experiences of students about the factors that enhance relational pedagogy in a South African university. To provide empirical explanations as to how these insights could be prioritised to enhance effective teaching and learning, quantitative and qualitative data were collected from 1087 participants using a survey that also required them to complete an open-ended section. The quantitative data was analysed using Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process, while the qualitative data was evaluated using thematic analysis. An analysis of the quantitative data revealed that the most significant factors that enhance relational pedagogy were, ethical care, interpersonal communication, natural care, respect, and mattering. Conversely, factors such as academic achievement support, trust, and teacher responsiveness showed comparatively weak effects on students’ perceptions of relational pedagogy. Similarly, the qualitative data analysed revealed that participants perceived teacher-student interaction and communication, mattering and teacher immediacy, and the ethics of care as the most significant themes that serve to enhance relational pedagogy in the learning environment. The study concludes by highlighting the implications of using relational pedagogy as a tool to address the social, cognitive, and cultural gaps in the teaching and learning processes
Sustainable R&D portfolio assessment.
Research and development portfolio management is traditionally technologically and financially dominated, with little or no attention to the sustainable focus, which represents the triple bottom line: not only financial (and technical) issues but also human and environmental values. This is mainly due to the lack of quantified and reliable data on the human aspects of product/service development: usability, ecology, ethics, product experience, perceived quality etc. Even if these data are available, then consistent decision support tools are not ready available. Based on the findings from an industry review, we developed a DEA model that permits to support strategic R&D portfolio management. We underscore the usability of this approach with real life examples from two different industries: consumables and materials manufacturing (polymers).R&D portfolio management; Data envelopment analysis; Sustainable R&D;
Applying the Fuzzy Analytic Network Process to Establish the Relative Importance of Knowledge Sharing Barriers
Knowledge sharing (KS) is the key to creativity and innovation in any organizations. Overcoming the KS barriers has created new challenges for designing in dynamic and complex environment. There may be interrelations and interdependences among the barriers. The purpose of this paper is to present a review of literature of KS barriers and impute the relative importance of them through the fuzzy analytic network process that is a generalization of the analytical hierarchy process (AHP). It helps to prioritize the barriers to find ways to remove them to facilitate KS. The study begins with a brief description of KS barriers and the most critical ones. The FANP and its role in identifying the relative importance of KS barriers are explained. The paper, then, proposes the model for research and expected outcomes. The study suggests that the use of the FANP is appropriate to impute the relative importance of KS barriers which are intertwined and interdependent. Implications and future research are also propose
An Integration of Rank Order Centroid, Modified Analytical Hierarchy Process and 0-1 Integer Programming in Solving A Facility Location Problem
Hadhramout province is the major producer of dates in The Republic of Yemen. Despite producing substantial quantity and quality of dates, the business losses are still high. The situation worsens with the widespread of the black market activities. Recently, the Yemeni government has issued an agreement stating the importance of building a date palm packaging factory as a resolution to the problems. Hence, this study aims to identify the best location for a date palm packaging factory among the seven districts which produce most of the date palm supplies in Hadhramout. The selection was based on eleven criteria identified by several representatives from the farmers and the local councils. These criteria were market growth, proximity to the markets, proximity to the raw materials, labor, labor climate, suppliers, community, transportation cost, environmental factors, production cost, and factory set up cost. The level of importance and the respective weight of each criterion were calculated using two different approaches, namely, Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Rank Order Centroid (ROC). In applying AHP, a slight modification was made in the pairwise comparison exercises that eliminated the inconsistency problem faced by the standard AHP pairwise comparison procedure. Likewise, in applying ROC, a normalization technique was proposed to tackle the problem of assigning weights to criteria having the same priority level, which was neither clarified nor available in the standard ROC. Both proposed techniques revealed that suppliers were the most important criterion, while community was regarded to be the least important criterion in deciding the final location for the date palm factory. Combining the criteria weights together with several hard and soft constraints that were required to be satisfied by the location, the final location was determined using three different mathematical models, namely, the ROC combined with 0-1 integer programming model, the AHP combined with 0-1 integer programming model, and the mean of ROC and AHP combined with 0-1 integer programming model. The three models produced the same result; Doean was the best location. The result of this study, if implemented, would hopefully help the Yemeni government in their effort to improve the production as well as the management of the date palm tree in Hadhramout
Partner selection in agile supply chains: A fuzzy intelligent approach
Partner selection is a fundamental issue in supply chain management as it contributes significantly to overall supply chain performance. However, such decision-making is problematic due to the need to consider both tangible and intangible factors, which cause vagueness, ambiguity and complexity. This paper proposes a new fuzzy intelligent approach for partner selection in agile supply chains by using fuzzy set theory in combination with radial basis function artificial neural network. Using these two approaches in combination enables the model to classify potential partners in the qualification phase of partner selection efficiently and effectively using very large amounts of both qualitative and quantitative data. The paper includes a worked empirical application of the model with data from 84 representative companies within the Chinese electrical components and equipment industry, to demonstrate its suitability for helping organisational decision-makers in partner selection
Applications of Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process in Urban Mobility System
Importance of urban mobility system is increasing from year to year. This is the reason why decision making process is increasingly complex requiring taking into account more and more different criteria. One of the important and commonly used techniques that support decision making processes is Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) while for the purpose of supporting a more realistic way of decision making, fuzzy logic is used. The paper examines the use of fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (FAHP) in the urban mobility system. With the use of systematic literature review (SLR) it categorises peer reviewed journals’ articles related to the applications of FAHP in urban mobility system and extracted from Scopus and Web of science database, and analyses them methodologically. Papers were classified based on basic attributes of research papers, features of urban mobility system (UMS) where the FAHP was used, and use characteristics of the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP). The results of this study indicated that the use of FAHP in urban mobility system is increasing with the first published paper in 2009. Our review has found that FAHP is used for very different purposes such as evaluation of customer expectations or citing a selection problem. Most often it is used in combination with other methods. Interestingly, there is only one paper that uses FAHP for decision making in the whole urban mobility system
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