Evaluating innovation capabilities of real estate firms: a combined fuzzy delphi and dematel approach.

Due to strong competition, numerous technology advancements and the monetary policy of the government, the survival of Indian real estate firms now depends on their capacity to measure their existing innovation capabilities, rebuild them and adopt new ones. The aim of this study is to evaluate the technology and human resources innovation capabilities of Indian real estate firms by applying fuzzy Delphi and DEMATEL techniques. After identifying the innovation capabilities through an extensive literature review, a questionnaire is designed based on fuzzy linguistic scales to manage any vagueness of information received. Data has been collected from experts in the field, with capabilities then finalized by using a fuzzy Delphi method. To establish cause-effect relationships among capabilities, a DEMATEL method is applied to the data collected from a second questionnaire. Analysis of the data divides capabilities into two groups i.e. cause and effect. The results show that innovation management, robustness of product and process design capability, strategic planning and knowledge resources fall in the cause group; these are critical findings given the effect on the other capabilities. The study outcomes can help real estate firms to enhance their capabilities with the proposed model providing guidelines and direction in this regard.N/

Analysis of luxury resort hotels by using the Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process and the Fuzzy Delphi Method

Experience Economy is an accelerator switching the experience process of consumption into eternal memory, perfecting value and promoting positive after-buying intention. This research uses the Fuzzy Delphi Method (FDM) and Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAHP) to construct a system of evaluation criteria focused on understanding the luxury resort hotels (LRHs) industry in Taiwan and Macao. One finding of this study is that objective hotels in these two territories exhibit different hotel operating characteristic (the unity LRHs mode in Taiwan vs involving casino LRHs in Macao) and customer markets. These Macanese LRHs define them as international operations, in contrast the Taiwanese position themselves as domestic businesses. The other finding is that Taiwan based evaluation criteria on consumer-orientation and operation and management, while Macao stressed evaluation based on operation and management to manage LRHs industry

Sustainability of treatment technologies for industrial biowastes effluents

Despite the huge efforts to develop efficient technologies for the treatment of recalcitrant biowastes and other emerging pollutants, selecting the most sustainable method among the possible alternatives is still a formidable task. This is mainly because of the integration of technical, economic, environmental, and social criteria in decision-making process. Traditionally, various multi-criteria decision-making approaches have been adopted to integrate innumerable criteria for environmental applications. In this study, we have examined the fuzzy-Delphi approach to evaluate seventeen parameters for integrating technical, economic, environmental and social criteria in order to rank the nine treatment technologies divided in two categories (physico-chemical and biological processes). The results of this study indicated that although efficiency of treatment methods is the most important criterion, but contribution of other sustainability criteria should also be considered because they are of high importance for the selection of sustainable wastewater treatment methods. As per our proposed framework on membrane technologies (among the many other physico-chemical methods) and anaerobic sludge blanket technology (among the biological treatment methods) are the most promising approaches for the treatment of highly polluted emerging industrial pollutants. The findings of this study are fully supported by the consensus achieved by a group of fifty experts from nineteen different countries. Opportunities for the improvement of the methods as per data generated are discussed.publishe

Indicators for socio-religious harmony index (SRHI) instrument for Malaysia: findings of FDM expert panel

This study contributes to an understanding of the Malaysian socio-religious situation. Being a multi-religious country, Malaysia is not immune to contentious issues and incidents that challenge the relationship between different religious groups. Thus, it is crucial for the country to be conscious of its level of inter-religious relationship in order to maintain peaceful coexistence within the nation. This literature review is presented as a guideline to propose suitable indicators for the Socio-Religious Harmony Index (SRHI) instrument. This study uses the Design and Developmental Research (DDR) approach to conduct a Needs Analysis (Phase 1), development of the SRHI instrument (Phase 2) and evaluation of the index (Phase 3). This paper discusses Phase 2 of DDR, which is the development of the SRHI instrument. The method of this phase uses the Fuzzy Delphi Method (FDM) involving 14 expert panels invited to participate in the development of the instrument through a workshop. There were two rounds of FDM sessions, where the first round was to determine the indicators and the second round was to determine the sub-indicators. The end output of this paper is to present the findings of selected indicators for this index instrument as it was determined in FDM round one and two. The result shows that all 22 proposed indicators were accepted for inclusion in the SRHI instrument with the highest ranking indicators being mutual respect and the lowest ranking indicator being acknowledgement. The result of FDM round two shows that 53 sub-indicators were accepted out of 58 sub-indicators. Lastly, this paper presents the overall indicators and respective sub-indicators for the SRHI instrument

Return on strategic effectiveness – the need for synchronising growth and development strategies in the hotel industry using revenue management

The purpose of this paper is to identify the essential determinants, and highlight the importance, of synchronising the growth and development strategies of hotel companies. The paper aims to analyse preconditions to successful and stable business performance and customer loyalty. The paper is based on the hypothesis that strategic and organisational effectiveness helps to create preconditions to stable business in the future, which is reflected in satisfactory growth, financial strength and solvency, and results in creating added value. The five-year financial data of three hotel companies with similar business orientation from Istria County (Croatia) were used to test the model for synchronising growth and development strategies in the hotel industry and the fuzzy logic-based growthdevelopment synchronisation coefficient. The model was tested on multi-annual results (the period 2010–2014), and conclusions and recommendations were made for a future work

MRAM commercialization potential evaluation Research Based on the Chinese Market

Regarding the Chinese data storage industries, there is an urgent need for a national strategy and new investments as there are new technologies emerging in the global markets. The storage technology commercialization activities are becoming a widespread concern for the Chinese government and their strategic enterprises. The promotion of storage technology commercialization has become a common goal for enterprise and national government strategies. How the potential for commercialization of a storage technology can be assessed, what evaluation index should be used, and what the factors affect the storage technology are the important issues that must be addressed

Integrative model for the selection of a new product launch strategy, based on ANP, TOPSIS and MCGP: a case study

New product launch strategy is a key competitive advantage for a new product development. A new product launch is a multiple criteria decision-making problem, which involves evaluating different criteria or attributes in a strategy selection process. The purpose of this paper is to develop a qualitative and quantitative approach for the selection of a new product launch strategy. The current study proposes an integrated approach, integrating analytic network process, the technique for order preference by similarity to an ideal solution and multi-choice goal programming, which can be used to determine the best launch strategy for marketing problems. The advantage of this integrated method is that it enables the consideration of both tangible (qualitative) and intangible (quantitative) criteria as well as both “more/higher is better” (e.g., benefit criteria) and “less/lower is better” (e.g., cost criteria) in the launch strategy of a new product selection problem. To show the practicality and usefulness of this method, an empirical example of a watch company is demonstrated. First published online: 03 Nov 201

A Framework for Prioritizing Opportunities of Improvement in the Context of Business Excellence Model in Healthcare Organization

In today\u27s world, the healthcare sector is facing challenges to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of its operations. More and more improvement projects are being adopted to enhance healthcare services, making it more patient-centric, and enabling better cost control. Healthcare organizations strive to identify and carry out such improvement initiatives to sustain their businesses and gain competitive advantage. Seeking to reach a higher operational level of excellence, healthcare organizations utilize business excellence criteria to conduct assessment and identify organizational strengths and weaknesses. However, while such assessments routinely identify numerous areas for potential improvement, it is not feasible to conduct all improvement projects simultaneously due to limitations in time, capital, and personnel, as well as conflict with other organization\u27s projects or strategic objectives. An effective prioritization and selection approach is valuable in that it can assist the organization to optimize its available resources and outcomes. This study attempts to enable such an approach by developing a framework to prioritize improvement opportunities in healthcare in the context of the business excellence model through the integration of the Fuzzy Delphi Method and Fuzzy Interface System. To carry out the evaluation process, the framework consists of two phases. The first phase utilizes Fuzzy Delphi Method to identify the most significant factors that should be considered in healthcare for electing the improvement projects. The FDM is employed to handle the subjectivity of human assessment. The research identifies potential factors for evaluating projects, then utilizes FDM to capture expertise knowledge. The first round in FDM is intended to validate the identified list of factors from experts; which includes collecting additional factors from experts that the literature might have overlooked. When an acceptable level of consensus has been reached, a second round is conducted to obtain experts\u27 and other related stakeholders\u27 opinions on the appropriate weight of each factor\u27s importance. Finally, FDM analyses eliminate or retain the criteria to produce a final list of critical factors to select improvement projects. The second phase in the framework attempts to prioritize improvement initiatives using the Hierarchical Fuzzy Interface System. The Fuzzy Interface System combines the experts\u27 ratings for each improvement opportunity with respect to the factors deemed critical to compute the priority index. In the process of calculating the priority index, the framework allows the estimation of other intermediate indices including: social, financial impact, strategical, operational feasibility, and managerial indices. These indices bring an insight into the improvement opportunities with respect to each framework\u27s dimensions. The framework allows for a reduction of the bias in the assessment by developing a knowledge based on the perspectives of multiple experts