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Group decision making in

a multiple criteria
environment :

A case using the AHP in software


selection
AHP
The Analytic Hierarchy Process
The AHP in group decision support

• Thomas L. Saaty 1970


• Complex decisions
• Comprehensive and rational framework
– for structuring a problem
– for representing and quantifying its elements
– for relating those elements to overall goals
– for evaluating alternative solutions
• Decompose decision problem into a hierarchy of
more easily comprehended sub-problems
• Evaluate its various elements
• Human judgments can be used in evaluations
• AHP : converts the evaluations to numerical values
• Numerical weight or priority
• Comparison for diverse and often incommensurable
elements
• Numerical priorities : alternatives' relative ability to
achieve the decision goal
Set the Priorities
• Consensus
• Vote or Compromise
• Geometric mean of the individuals' judgments
( average )
• Separate models or players
AHP in a group setting
• Accommodate both tangible and intangible
characteristics, individual values and shared
values

• The discussion centers on objectives rather


than on alternatives
• Allow discussion to continue until all
available and pertinent information have
been considered and a consensus choice of the
alternative most likely to achieve the
organization's stated objectives is achieved

• Subjective and objective evaluation measures


AHP and group decision makers
• Structure complex decisions
• Develop measures of utility
• Synthesize measures of both tangibles and
intangibles
• A flexible tool for group decision making
• More responsibility and satisfaction
• Comparisons can be quickly revised
Delphi Method
• Is a systematic , interactive forecasting method
• On a panel of independent experts, in face-to-
face meetings
• After each round, a facilitator provides an
anonymous summary of the experts’
forecasts from the previous round as well as the
reasons they provided for their judgments - a
facilitator : a person coordinating the Delphi
method
• Revision of answers in light of the replies of other
members of the group
• During this process the range of the answers will
decrease and the group will converge towards the
"correct" answer
• Pre-defined stop criterion
– number of rounds
– achievement of consensus
– stability of results
• The mean or median scores of the final rounds
determine the results
• But time consuming and without any definite way
Conclusion
• AHP was easy to use
• Its hierarchy model encouraged decision
makers to work as a collaborative unit and
led to a more cooperative analysis of the
problem
• Group decisions without the AHP were
harder to achieve due to the lack of a
common reference model
• AHP had the potential to eventually force
them to focus on individual views
• The interactiveness of AHP invites decision
makers to continually refine the group's
preference
• It improved the quality of the group decision
• Satisfaction with the group decision
• Reaching a consensus
Managing virtual teams:

A review of current empirical


research
Virtual Team

• Two or more persons

Who
• Collaborate interactively to achieve common
goals
While
• At least one of the team members works at a
different location, organization, or at a
different time

So that
• Communication and coordination is
predominantly based on electronic
communication media
Various Forms of Virtual Work
Depending on:

• The number of persons involved

• The degree of interaction between them


Teleworker
• People working at home, often through a
different employment contract. If the
workers communicate with each other through
the network this is an instance of electronic
teamwork
Virtual Groups

• When several teleworkers are combined

• Each member reports to the same manager


Virtual Teams

• When the members of a virtual group interact


with each other

• To accomplish common goals


Virtual Communities
• Are larger entities of distributed work

• Members participate via the Internet

• Common purposes, roles and norms

• Are not implemented within an organizational


structure
Virtuality

• the relation of face-to-face to non-face-to-face


communication
• the average distance between the members
• number of working sites represented in the
team
• the number of members at each site
Virtuality in Teams
• Individual

• Organizational

• Societal
Individual
• Advantages

higher
– flexibility
– time control
– responsibilities
– work motivation
– empowerment of the team members
• Challenges

– feelings of isolation
– decreased interpersonal contact
– increased chances of misunderstandings
– conflict escalation
– increased opportunities of role ambiguity and
goal conflicts due to commitments to different
work-units
Organizational
• Advantages (strategic)
– working by skills
– working round the clock
– speed and flexibility in response to market
demands
– a closer connection to suppliers and customers
– expenses for traveling and office space can be
reduced
• Challenges

– difficulties to supervise team members’ activities


– additional costs for appropriate technology
Societal
• Advantages

– develop regions with low infrastructure and


employment rate
– integrate persons with low mobility
– decrease environmental strains
• Challenges

– isolation between people


Lifecycle Model of Virtual Team
Management

• Phase A: Preparations
• Phase B: Launch
• Phase C: Performance Management
• Phase D: Team Development
• Phase E: Disbanding
Phase A : Preparations
Personnel Selection
• KSA
• general cognitive abilities
• taskwork-related attributes (hard working and
reliable , integrity)
• teamwork-related socio-emotional attributes
(agreeableness , emotional stability)
• attributes relevant for telecooperation
• diversity
Task Design

Suitable tasks for virtual teams:

• the lower their degree of physical work


• the higher the degree of information-based
work
Task Type

• Generating
• Choosing
• Negotiating
• Executing
Task Interdependence

• describes the degree or requirement of task-


driven interaction among group members

• is determined by the design of the group task


High Task Interdependence

• is created when team members have to


coordinate their activities frequently so that
the performance of one member strongly
affects the work process of other team
members
• positive effect:
increases of
– teams cohesion
– trust
– the sense of indispensability of personal
contributions to the team
– team communication
• negative effects:
– increase process losses and conflicts within the
team
Rewards System
• have to be adapted to
– goals
– task interdependence
– autonomy
– diversity
– degree of virtuality
Technology
• To support the collaboration of virtual teams
• Groupware : workgroup support systems - help
people involved in a common task achieve their goals
– interaction through computers
• GSS : a collaboration technology designed to support
meetings and group work - electronic meeting
system
– GSS can improve communication, structure problem-
solving processes, and maintain an alignment between
personal and group goals
Organizational Integration

• sufficient organizational support

• frequent communication with other


organizational units
Phase B : Launch
Kick-off Workshops

• getting acquainted with the other team members


• clarifying the team goals
• clarifying the roles and functions of the team
members
• information and training how communication
technologies can be used efficiently
• developing general rules for the teamwork
Phase C : Performance Management
• After the launch of a virtual team, work
effectiveness and a constructive team climate
has to be maintained using performance
management strategies

– leadership
– communication within virtual teams
– team members’ motivation
– knowledge management
Leadership

• team managers are not at the same location as


the team members

• delegative management principles : shift parts


of classic managerial functions to the team
members – self management
Leadership Approaches
• EPM : Electronic Performance Management
– Standardization
– Separation
– Simplification
• MBO : Management By Objective :
process of agreeing upon objectives within an organization so
that management and employees agree to the objectives and understand
what they are
– goal setting
– participation
– feedback about task fulfillment
• Self-management
– Self organization
Regulation of Communication

• The main concern here is that electronic media


reduce the richness of information exchange
compared to face-to-face communication
• Conflict escalation
– describes the escalation of a conflict to a more destructive,
confrontational, painful, or otherwise "less comfortable"
level.
– A clash of interests, values, actions or directions often
sparks a conflict.

• Dis-inhibited communication ( flaming )


– Disinhibition is a term in psychology used to describe
conditions of a person being unable (rather than
disinclined) to control their immediate impulsive response
to a situation.
Non-job-related Communication

• The amount of non-task-related


communication correlated positively with both
team effectiveness and team members’
satisfaction

• Cohesion , trust , motivation


Maintenance of Motivation and
Emotion
• motivation and trust
– valence
– instrumentality
– self-efficacy
– trust
• team identification and cohesion
• satisfaction of the team members
Knowledge Management
• Management of knowledge and the
development of shared understanding within
the teams
• Knowledge Management ('KM') comprises a
range of practices used by organizations to
identify, create, represent, and
distribute knowledge for reuse, awareness and
learning
Phase D : Training and Team
Development
• the development of such training concepts
should be based on an empirical assessment of
the needs and/or deficits of the team and its
members, and the effectiveness of the
trainings should be evaluated empirically

• increased cohesiveness and team satisfaction


compared to a control group
Phase E : Disbanding
• the final stage of group development

• when virtual project teams have only a short life-


time (transient teams) and reform again quickly,
careful and constructive disbanding is mandatory in
order to maintain high motivation and satisfaction
among the employees

• team identity which is based on common fate


should start high in the beginning of the teamwork
but should shrink constantly over time
Conclusion
• A strong need for clarified team goals and team roles
that are not in conflict with commitments to other
work units
• Careful implementation of efficient communication
and collaboration processes that prevent
misunderstandings and conflict escalation due to
reduced communication cues
• Continuous support of team awareness, informal
communication, and sharing of socio-emotional cues
together with sufficient performance feedback and
information about the individual working situation of
each virtual team member
• Creating experiences of interdependence within the
team in order to compensate for feelings of
disconnectedness, for instance via goal setting, task
design, or team-based incentives
• Developing appropriate kick-off workshops and
team training concepts to prepare and support the
teams for the specific challenges of virtual teamwork
Locus of control and
attitudes to working in
virtual teams
LOC : Locus Of Control
• Julian B. Rotter in 1954 based on social learning
theory
– expected effect or outcome of the behavior has an impact
on motivation of people to engage in that behavior
– people learn new behavior through over reinforcement or
punishment or via observational learning
• important aspect of personality
• refers to a person's belief about what causes the good
or bad results in his or her life – it effects on
behaviour and performance
– Internal : meaning the person believes that they
control themself and their life
• High-achieving
• Hard workers
• Proactive
– External : meaning they believe that their
environment, some higher power, or other
people control their decisions and their life
• Less realistic
• Less capable of coping with their environment
• Learned helplessness
– has learned to act or behave helpless in a particular situation,
even when it has the power to change its unpleasant or even
harmful circumstance
LOC components
Personal
• Ability
• Effort

Environmental
• Task difficulty
• Luck
Role Conflict

• Role conflict is a conflict among the roles


corresponding to two or more statues
• Often, two or more roles collide in certain
situations
• One is forced to take on two different and
incompatible roles at the same time
Role Conflict and Job
Satisfaction
• Any mismatch between individual preference and
actual work performed, it can act as an indicator of
possible role stress
• Economic pressures often result in workers being
asked to perform roles and tasks that they may not be
emotionally suitable or technically equipped to do
• The lack of socialisation and having to work in
relative isolation
• Unhappy having to have to work through the
electronic media
• Remoteness of distributed working also reduces the
opportunity for learning and ideas sharing
• Self-preservation
– ‘passing the buck’ to other stakeholders
– blame events that are outside of their control
• Members may find themselves operating outside of
their zone of comfort as they are called to interact
horizontally and vertically with multiple project
stakeholders
Conclusion
• Individuals LOC can affect team performance
• Punishment or failure can cause stress and this
can lead to unsatisfaction
• A good understanding of member-member
behavioral influences are important
• The structured rules can help for better
management for virtual teams
Innovation management
in context:
environment, organization and
performance
Best Practice
• Best Practice is an idea that asserts that there is a technique,
method, process, activity, incentive or reward that is more
effective at delivering a particular outcome than any other
technique, method, process, etc.
• The idea is that with proper processes, checks, and testing, a
desired outcome can be delivered with fewer problems and
unforeseen complications.
• Best practices can also be defined as the most efficient (least
amount of effort) and effective (best results) way of
accomplishing a task, based on repeatable procedures that
have proven themselves over time for large numbers of
people.
Contingency Theory
• They suggested that previous theories such as Weber's
bureaucracy and Taylor's scientific management had
failed because they neglected that management style and
organizational structure were influenced by various
aspects of the environment : the contingency factors.
There could not be "one best way" for leadership or
organization.
• No single organizational structure is effective in all
circumstances, and that instead there is an optimal
organizational structure that best fits a given
contingency, such as size, strategy, task uncertainty or
technology
Factors Which Affect Management
Of Innovation

• Type of innovation
• Stage of innovation
• Scope of innovation
• Type of organization
Environmental Contingencies
• Uncertainty : is a function of the rate of change of
technologies and product-markets
Affects:
– magnitude of innovation
– nature of innovation

• Complexity : a function of the number of


technologies and their interactions , and technological
and organizational interdependencies
Complexity and Uncertainty and
management of innovation
• Differentiated
– Complexity low , Uncertainty low

• Innovative
– Complexity low , Uncertainty high

• Networked
– Complexity high , Uncertainty low

• Complex
– Complexity high , Uncertainty high
• Differentiated
– Marketing competencies
– Product or market multi-divisional structure
• Innovative
– Scientific or technological competencies
– Functional structure
• Networked
– Project management competencies
– Professional structure
• Complex
– A range of competencies
• Flexibility
• Adaption
• Learning
Degree and Type of Innovation
• Type
– Product innovation ( change in product or
service )
– Process innovation ( change in ways product or
service are created )
• Degree : Degree of novelty involved
– Sustaining
– Disruptive
• Sustaining

– Revolutionary : An innovation that creates a new


market by allowing customers to solve a problem
in a radically new way. (E.g., the automobile)
– Evolutionary : An innovation that improves a
product in an existing market in ways that
customers are expecting. (E.g., fuel injection)
• Disruptive
– An innovation that creates a new (and unexpected) market
by applying a different set of values. (E.g., the lower priced
Ford Model-T)
– Disruptive technologies are particularly threatening to the
leaders of an existing market, because they are competition
coming from an unexpected direction.
– Can come to dominate an existing market by either filling a
role in a new market that the older technology could not fill
(as cheaper, lower capacity but smaller-sized flash
memory) or by successively moving up-market through
performance improvements until finally displacing the
market incumbents (as digital photography has largely
replaced film photography).
Innovation Space
Organizational Responses to
Complexity and Uncertainty

• the goal should be to identify the organizational


configurations most suited to specific technological
and market environments , rather than to seek a
single idea or best practice model for ANY context
– Internal organization
• Functional links
• Definition of business divisions based on product–market linkages
– External linkages
• Using suitable networks
Conclusion
• Therefore the better the fit between
organization and contingency , the higher the
organizational performance
• Contingencies affect the structure of
organization and innovation management

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