Fuzzy Sets in Business Management, Finance, and Economics

This book collects fifteen papers published in s Special Issue of Mathematics titled “Fuzzy Sets in Business Management, Finance, and Economics”, which was published in 2021. These paper cover a wide range of different tools from Fuzzy Set Theory and applications in many areas of Business Management and other connected fields. Specifically, this book contains applications of such instruments as, among others, Fuzzy Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis, Neuro-Fuzzy Methods, the Forgotten Effects Algorithm, Expertons Theory, Fuzzy Markov Chains, Fuzzy Arithmetic, Decision Making with OWA Operators and Pythagorean Aggregation Operators, Fuzzy Pattern Recognition, and Intuitionistic Fuzzy Sets. The papers in this book tackle a wide variety of problems in areas such as strategic management, sustainable decisions by firms and public organisms, tourism management, accounting and auditing, macroeconomic modelling, the evaluation of public organizations and universities, and actuarial modelling. We hope that this book will be useful not only for business managers, public decision-makers, and researchers in the specific fields of business management, finance, and economics but also in the broader areas of soft mathematics in social sciences. Practitioners will find methods and ideas that could be fruitful in current management issues. Scholars will find novel developments that may inspire further applications in the social sciences

Fuzzy Transfer Pricing World: On the Analysis of Transfer Pricing with Fuzzy Logic Techniques

The arm’s length analysis of international transfer prices of multinational firms lacks sound methodological approach of the so-called function and risk analysis. In practice, such analyses are descriptive. Derived from Zadeh’s mathematical theory of fuzzy sets, this paper investigates a quantitative approach to identify the function and risk pattern of related parties of multinational companies. We illustrate our fuzzy logic approach with a simple case.

Governance through ?public utilities? models: a regional social interaction approach

Based on neo-regionalist literature, this paper put on the foreground the importance of public utilities in the “governance” processes. New economic and cultural trends need the abandon of a hierarchical model of government in favour of the governance model, based on organizational structures of partnership and/or of open market. A first step in governance process is the decentralization, or “decentralizing governance”, that is to restructure and to reorganize local authority with the creation of a system of co-responsibility among institutions at the central, regional and local levels according to the principle of “subsidiarity”, and public, private or civil stakeholders. A typical public domain service, the public utilities management, become a crucial issue in order to identity and measure “governance” quality in different local contexts. The paper compares three different typologies in the public utilities market and their effects on the “governance” process. A first typology is based on tenders enhancing the concurrence among local and foreign actors for gaining the assets of the local services; a second one is based on the “project financing strategy”, involving a cooperation mechanism between public and private sector: this model is diffused all over the world; a third one is focused on the sharing of the whole local services branch among a number of contractors, each one assuring the best of efficiency in its field. Finally, the paper aims identifying “actors” and “items” of the governance model involved in public utilities management and giving also indications and suggestions for the implementation of local strategies and policies in order to enhance cooperative connections among suppliers, subcontractors and customers.

Fuzzy Systems in Business Valuation

This research aims to develop a model that is able to integrate and objectify information provided by the different business valuation methods, incorporating quality management in its formal approach, which to date has not been considered in the literature about business valuation or quality management. Firstly, the company is valued using the methods which best adapt to its specific characteristics. Because of the subjectivity inherent in any valuation process, the results will be expressed through Triangular Fuzzy Numbers (TFN). These Fuzzy Numbers will be aggregated and summarized by applying Basic Defuzzification Distribution Uncertain Probabilistic Ordered Weighted Averaging operator (BADD-UPOWA). The weighting factors will be: the degree of confidence in each of the business valuation methods applied, and the innovative use of the company’s position on Crosby’s Quality Administration Grid. The results from application of the model in a case study show a significant reduction in uncertainty in contrast to the initial valuations. Moreover, the proposed methodology is seen to increase the final value of the company as its advances in quality management

Fuzzy decision making in complex frameworks with generalized aggregation operators

[EN] This article presents a new aggregation system applied to fuzzy decision making. The fuzzy generalized unified aggregation operator (FGUAO) is a system that integrates many operators by adding a new aggregation process that considers the relevance that each operator has in the analysis. It also deals with an uncertain environment where the information is studied with fuzzy numbers. A wide range of particular cases and properties are studied. This approach is further extended by using quasi-arithmetic means. The paper ends studying the applicability in decision making problems regarding the European Union decisions. For doing so, the work uses a multi-person aggregation process obtaining the multi-person - FGUAO operator. An example concerning the fixation of the interest rate by the European Central Bank is presented. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.We would like to thank the associate editor and the anonymous reviewers for valuable comments that have improved the quality of the paper. Support from the Chilean Government through the Fondecyt Regular program (project number 1160286), the University of Chile, the project PIEF-GA-2011-300062 of the European Commission and the Distinguished Scientist Fellowship Program of the King Saud University (Saudi Arabia), is gratefully acknowledged.Merigó -Lindahl, JM.; Gil-Lafuente, AM.; Yu, D.; Llopis Albert, C. (2018). Fuzzy decision making in complex frameworks with generalized aggregation operators. Applied Soft Computing. 68:314-321. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asoc.2018.04.002S3143216

OWA operators in the calculation of the average green-house gases emissions

This study proposes, through weighted averages and ordered weighted averaging operators, a new aggregation system for the investigation of average gases emissions. We present the ordered weighted averaging operators gases emissions, the induced ordered weighted averaging operators gases emissions, the weighted ordered weighted averaging operators gases emissions and the induced probabilistic weighted ordered weighted averaging operators gases emissions. These operators represent a new way of analyzing the average gases emissions of different variables like countries or regions. The work presents further generalizations by using generalized and quasi-arithmetic means. The article also presents an illustrative example with respect to the calculations of the average gases emissions in the European region

The need of standardization and the potential role of voluntary approaches: Issues and trends in Italian GCHP market

Despite the lack of specific incentives, Ground Coupled Heat Pumps (GCHP) installations are booming in Italy both in private and public sectors of the market. Such rapid growth entails an increasing concern for environmental and technical performances since no comprehensive regulation and reliable standards exist yet. By means of an investigation of sectoral opinion leaders and SWOT-based technique for building scenarios, this paper discusses potential schemes for balancing mandatory and voluntary requirements. The analysis suggests that standardization and voluntary schemes are perceived as effective tools to encourage the greening of Italian GCHP-SMEs in short-run while laying the foundations for evolving sustainable policies in the longer run. A potential scheme that has been simulated by reflecting the supply-side orientations of the market and that involves of process and product standards is discussed.

New aggregation operators for decision-making under uncertainty: an applications in selection of entrepreneurial opportunities

The main aim of this paper is to study how economic environment and logic reasoning guidance the decision-making process to start-up a new business by potential entrepreneurs. The study proposes a new method using the family of selection indices with OWA operator, which allows aggregating information according to the level of importance and their level of objectivity and subjectivity in the same formulation within the decision-making process. To develop case study, we have taken into account some industries of the sports sector and some critical environmental factors that influence the competitiveness and entrepreneurship in Colombia to start a new business. The results show in an orderly way all information aggregated, which can help potential investors and entrepreneurs to make a decision based on their preferences. Finally, the applicability of this method in real case can be given in aggregation different sources of information to help at dealing decision-making processes

Product and international diversification of business groups in China: antecedent or consequence of superior performance?

Abstract The term business group generally refers to conglomerate firms with multiple majority-owned subsidiaries and minority-owned affiliates, engaged in a diverse array of business activities. A recent stream of literature explains the predominance of these structures, typical of the emerging and transitional, from socialist to market-based economies, as a result of their ability to neutralize market failures, and to act as substitutes for imperfect economic, social and political institutions. In emerging countries, interlocking ties among firms are often created in order to make available scarce or nonexistent material and immaterial resources, as emerging economies are unlikely to be endowed with the combination of factors that promotes entrepreneurial activity. According to this traditional view, the extent of product and geographical diversification of the groups leads to better economic performance in emerging and transitional economies. A main question is whether this causal nexus, from diversification to performance, is confirmed, or actually reversed in the case of Chinese business groups, due to the historical and institutional contingencies in act during the evolution of these groups. Many of them were formed under the encouragement or active pressure of the Chinese government, which selected the better performing firms to acquire bankrupt state-owned enterprises in related industries. To better understand the nature of the causal link, the study has been integrated with further research focused on the modality and outcomes of the transition from traditional SOEs to business groups. The literature screened offered empirical evidence based on longitudinal data analyses that supported both views on the causal relationship between diversification and performance for business groups in China