Decision Support Systems 45 (2008) 913921

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Decision Support Systems

j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w. e l s e v i e r. c o m / l o c a t e / d s s

A data envelopment analysis method with assurance region for weight generation in the analytic hierarchy process
Ying-Ming Wang a,b,, Kwai-Sang Chin b, Gary Ka Kwai Poon b
a b

School of Management, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, PR China Department of Manufacturing Engineering and Engineering Management, City University of Hong Kong, 83 Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong, PR China

a r t i c l e

i n f o

a b s t r a c t
Data envelopment analysis (DEA) has been combined with the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to form a DEAHP for weight derivation and aggregation in the AHP. This paper proposes a DEA model with assurance region (AR) for priority derivation in the AHP, which is referred to as the DEA/AR model. This new DEA model can overcome the shortcomings of the DEAHP such as illogical local weights, over insensitivity to some comparisons, information loss, and overestimation of some local weights, and provide better priority estimate and better decision conclusions than the DEAHP. Numerical examples including a real application of the AHP to the recruitment of a research fellow for a research project are provided to show the advantages of the DEA/AR model and its potential applications in multiple criteria decision analysis (MCDA). 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Article history: Received 11 June 2007 Received in revised form 7 March 2008 Accepted 12 March 2008 Available online 20 March 2008 Keywords: Analytic hierarchy process Data envelopment analysis DEAHP Multiple criteria decision analysis Personal recruitment

1. Introduction As a simple and effective multiple criteria decisionmaking (MCDM) aid tool, analytic hierarchy process (AHP) has been extensively applied all over the world to a variety of elds such as agriculture [1], predictive maintenance [2], web service [6,15], medical and health care [7], water management [14], manufacturing, business, logistics and so on [4,18]. An important issue of applying the AHP is to determine local weights from pairwise comparison matrices. A signicant number of approaches have been suggested in the AHP literature, each with some merits and demerits, but none of them can be declared as the best. Although the eigenvector method (EM) is strongly recommended and preferred by

The work described in this paper is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) under the Grant No. 70771027 and also supported by a grant from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China, under the Grant No. CityU 111906. Corresponding author. School of Management, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, PR China. Tel.: +86 27 87556486; fax: +86 27 87556437. E-mail addresses: msymwang@hotmail.com, yingming.wang@manchester.ac.uk (Y.-M. Wang). 0167-9236/$ see front matter 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.dss.2008.03.002

Saaty [11], there is no wide agreement about its superiority (see Mikhailov [8] and Srdjevic [13] for example). Very recently, Ramanathan [10] developed a DEAHP method for weight derivation and aggregation in the AHP, which views each decision criterion or alternative in a pairwise comparison matrix as a decision making unit (DMU), the row elements of the pairwise comparison matrix as the outputs of the DMUs, and uses a dummy input that has a constant value of one for all the DMUs to build an inputoriented CCR model [3] for each DMU. The best relative efciency of each DMU is then dened as the local weight of the DMU. The DEAHP proved to be able to produce true weights for perfectly consistent pairwise comparison matrices and has been applied to supplier selection by Sevkli et al. [12]. However, the DEAHP has also been found to have some drawbacks. The most signicant drawback is that the DEAHP may produce counterintuitive local weights for inconsistent pairwise comparison matrices. Another signicant drawback is that the DEAHP is sometimes over insensitive to some comparisons in a pairwise comparison matrix. These drawbacks will be analyzed later. To overcome these drawbacks of the DEAHP, we propose in this paper a DEA method with assurance region for weight

914

Y.-M. Wang et al. / Decision Support Systems 45 (2008) 913921

generation in the AHP, which builds an assurance region (AR) for the DEAHP model so that local weights can be better generated. The resultant model is referred to as DEA/AR model, which turns out to be able to eliminate the abovementioned drawbacks of the DEAHP. The paper is organized as follows. In Section 2 we briey review the DEAHP and analyze its main drawbacks numerically. We then develop the DEA/AR model for the AHP in Section 3. Numerical examples are provided and examined in Section 4. The paper is concluded in Section 5. 2. DEAHP and its main drawbacks Let A = (aij)n n be a pairwise comparison matrix with aii = 1 and aij = 1 / aij N 0 for j i and W = (w1,,wn)T be its weight vector. The DEAHP views each row of the matrix A as a DMU, representing a decision criterion or alternative, each row element as an output and assumes a dummy constant input of one for all the DMUs. Each DMU has n outputs and one dummy constant input, based on which the following inputoriented CCR model [10] is built to derive the local weights of the pairwise comparison matrix A:
n X Maximize w0 a0j vj j1 8 > > > > u1 1; > > < n Subject to X > > aij vj u1 V0; i 1; N ; n; > > > j1 > : u1 ; vj z0; j 1; N ; n;

where vj (j = 1,,m) are decision variables, dj = wj / w1 (j = 1,,m) are the values computed from the local weights of decision criteria, wij (i = 1,,n, j = 1,,m) are the local weights of the ith decision alternative with respect to the jth decision criterion, and the subscript zero in objective functions refers to the decision alternative under evaluation, i.e. the DMU0 in DEA. Model (2) determines global weights without consideration of the local weights of decision criteria, while model (3) determines global weights by maintaining the quantitative relationships among the local weights of decision criteria unchanged, i.e. vi / v1 wi / w1 for j = 1,,m. It was suggested by Ramanathan [10] that model (2) should be preferred when calculating the nal weights of decision alternatives. If criteria weights are important and there is a strong reason to consider them, Ramanathan [10] suggested that the nal weights calculated with and without consideration of criteria weights should be presented together. As mentioned before, the DEAHP suffers from some drawbacks. The most signicant drawback is that the DEAHP may produce counterintuitive local weights for inconsistent pairwise comparison matrices. Consider for example the following pairwise comparison matrix: 1 4 1 1 6 1=4 1 7 3 6 61 1=7 1 1=5 A6 61 1=3 5 1 6 4 1=3 5 5 1 1=4 1 6 3 2 3 3 4 1=5 1 7 7 1=5 1=6 7 7: 1 1=3 7 7 1 3 5 1=3 1

where DMU0 refers to the criterion or alternative under represents the DEA evaluation. The optimum value w0 efciency of DMU0 and is viewed as its local weight. The linear programming model (1) is solved for all the DMUs to )T of A. It was ,,wn generate the weight vector W = (w1 proved that the DEAHP could derive true weights if A is a perfectly consistent pairwise comparison matrix, i.e. aij = aikakj for all i,j,k = 1,,n. In a hierarchical structure, the DEAHP offers the following two DEA models to aggregate local weights into global weights: Maximize
m X j1

which is inconsistent (CR = 0.3409 N 0.1). For this inconsistent pairwise comparison matrix, the DEAHP produces the weight vector (1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1) for the six criteria or alternatives. Such a weight vector obviously makes no sense and is irrational. It is this drawback that restricts the applications of the DEAHP. Another signicant drawback of the DEAHP is that the DEAHP is sometimes over insensitive to some comparisons in a pairwise comparison matrix. Consider for instance the following inconsistent pairwise comparison matrices: 1 B 4 1=2 1=5 1 D 4 1=9 1=5 2 2 2 1 1=3 9 1 1=3 3 5 3 5; 1 3 5 3 5: 1 1 C 4 1=5 1=5 2 3 5 5 1 3 5; 1=3 1

w0j vj

8 u1 1; > > >X > < m wij vj u1 V0; i 1; N ; n; Subject to > j1 > > > : u ; v z0; j 1; N ; n; 1 j and 0 1 m X v1 @ w0j dj A
j1

Maximize

Subject to

8 u10 1; > 1 > > m < X @ v1 wij dj A u1 V 0; > > j1 > : u1 ; v1 z0;

3 i 1; N ; n;

For these three inconsistent pairwise comparison matrices, no matter how different they are, the DEAHP produces exactly the same weight vector (1, 0.6, 0.2) for them. Apparently, the DEAHP weights are not sensitive to the changes of b12, c12 and d12. This drawback also restricts the applications of the DEAHP. It is also observed that the DEAHP weights (1, 0.6, 0.2) are actually the normalization of the last column of the above three inconsistent pairwise comparison matrices, which means that only part of information in a pairwise comparison matrix is effectively utilized by the DEAHP and all the other information is lost or not working. This leads to the third signicant drawback of the DEAHP. That is the DEAHP cannot make the best use of all the pairwise comparison information in a pairwise comparison matrix.

Y.-M. Wang et al. / Decision Support Systems 45 (2008) 913921

915

In the next section, we will develop a DEA model with assurance region for weight generation in the AHP to overcome the above-mentioned drawbacks. 3. DEA/AR model for the AHP Before developing the DEA/AR model, we rst introduce the lemma below. Lemma 1. Let A = (aij)n n be a nonnegative matrix with nonzero row sums r1,,r2 and maximal eigenvalue max. Then [9] 0 1 min @ ri i
n X j1

where subscript zero refers to the decision criterion or alternative under evaluation and is the upper bound determined by Lemma 1. That is 8 0 1 0 19 = < n n 1X 1X @ A @ b min max aij rj ; max aij cj A ; ; : i r i j 1 ci j1 i

12

1 aij rj AV k max V max @ ri i

n X j1

1 aij rj A: 4

Since the nonnegative matrix A and its transpose AT have the same maximal eigenvalue, the above inequality also holds for the transpose of A, i.e. 1 0 1 n n X X 1 1 min @ a c AV k max V max @ a c A; ci j1 ij j ci j1 ij j i i 0 5

where r1,,rn and c1,,cn are respectively the row sums and column sums of the pairwise comparison matrix A = (aij)n n. We refer to the method that utilizes model (11) to derive weights from pairwise comparison matrices as the DEA/AR method and the resultant weights as DEA/AR weights. With regard to the DEA/AR method, we have the following theorem. Theorem 1. If A = (aij)n s n is a perfectly consistent pairwise comparison matrix, then DEA/AR model (11) produces weights: w i wi = max
jaf1; N ;ng

wj ; i 1; N ; n;

13

where c1,,cn are the column sums of A. Apparently, pairwise comparison matrices are nonnegative matrices. Consider the following characteristic equation for the pairwise comparison matrix A = (aij)n n:
n X j1

which are a normalization of the true weights wi (i = 1,,n) of the pairwise comparison matrix A. Proof. Since A is a perfectly consistent pairwise comparison matrix, it can be characterized by the eigenvector weights wj n P 1= aij (j = 1,,n) as aij = wi / wj (i,j = 1,,n). Accordingly, n i1 n n P P P aij vj wi =wj vj wi vj =wj V1 ( i = 1, , n ), from j1 j1 j1P n vj =wj V1=wi for all i = 1,, which it can be derived that j 1 n P vj =wj V mini 1=wi 1= max wj . Thus, the n. That is
j1 jaf1; N ;ng

aij wj kmax wi ;

i 1; N ; n;

where max is the maximal eigenvalue of A. Eq. (6) can be rewritten as

n X j1

aij wj =k max wi ; i 1; N ; n:

Let vj wj ; k max j 1; N ; n: 8

maximum objective function value of Eq. (11) can be obtained as  n  P v max wj , where w0 {w1,, w 0 w0 j =wj w0 = wn}. Theorem 1 shows that DEA/AR model can produce true weights for perfectly consistent pairwise comparison matrices. For inconsistent pairwise comparison matrices, due to the role of assurance region DEA/AR model is able to produce rational, logical and intuitive weights consistent with decision makers' (DMs) subjective judgments. This will be illustrated through numerical examples in the next section. In the case of hierarchical structures, local weights need to be aggregated into global weights. Let w1,,wm be the local weights of m decision criteria and w1j,,wnj be the local weights of n decision alternatives with respect to the jth criterion (j = 1,,m). All of them are assumed to have already been generated by solving DEA/AR model (11) and form a decision matrix, as shown in Table 1, based on which the global weight of each decision alternative can be computed using the simple additive weighting (SAW) method [5] in MCDM and then normalized to their maximum. That is Pm j1 wij wj nXm
j 1 j 1 jaf1; N ;ng

Then, Eq. (7) can be equivalently expressed as

n X j1

aij vj wi ; i 1; N ; n:

For any n-order pairwise comparison matrix, it has already been known that max n. By Lemma 1, the upper bound of max can also be determined. Let be the upper bound for max determined by Lemma 1. Then, we have n max . By Eq. (8), n max can be equivalently expressed as n wj / vj for j = 1,,n. That is wj =bVvj Vwj =n; j 1; N ; n; 10

which are the constraints called assurance region (AR) [16,17] we derived for each decision variable vj (j = 1,,n). Combining Eqs. (9) and (10), we have the following DEA/AR model for the pairwise comparison matrix A = (aij)n n: Maximize w0 8 n X > < wi aij vj V 1; i 1; N ; n; Subject to j1 > : wj =b V vj V wj =n; j 1; N ; n;

11

w Ai

kaf1; N ;ng

max

wkj wj

o;

i 1; N ; n:

14

916 Table 1 Aggregation of local DEA/AR weights Alternative Criteria w1 A1 A2 An w11 w21 wn1 w2

Y.-M. Wang et al. / Decision Support Systems 45 (2008) 913921

Global weights wm w1m w2m wnm Non-normalized Pm 1 w1j wj Pjm j1 w2j wj Pm j1 wnj wj
Pm Pm

Normalized
j1 j1

w12 w22 wn2

w1j wj = max
i i

nXm
1 nXjm j1

wij wj wij wj wij wj

o o o

w2j wj = max wnj wj = max

i

m P

nXm

j1

j1

These results are exactly the same as those obtained by solving model (3). As a matter of fact, from model (3) it can be derived that u1 1 Pm ; i 1; N ; n; w d ij j j 1 j1 wij dj

For the pairwise comparison matrix A, is determined by Eq. (12) as 11.7883. Accordingly, the DEA/AR model (11) can be written as Maximize w0 8 v1 4v2 v3 v4 3v5 4v6 w1 0; > > > >1 1 > > v1 v2 7v3 3v4 v5 v6 w2 0; > > 5 >4 > > 1 1 1 1 > > > v1 v2 v3 v4 v5 v6 w3 0; > > 7 5 5 6 > > > 1 1 > > v v 5 v v v v > 5 1 2 3 4 6 w4 0; > 3 3 > < 1 Subject to v 5v2 5v3 v4 v5 3v6 w5 0; : >3 1 > > > 1 1 > > v1 v2 6v3 3v4 v5 v6 w6 0; > > > 4 3 > > 1 > > > w z 0 ; i 1; N ; 6; v > i 11:7883 i > > > > 1 > > v w V 0; i 1; N ; 6; > > > i 6 i : wi V 1; i 1; N ; 6

v1 V Pm

which can be equivalently expressed as ( v1 V

iaf1; N ;ng

min

1 Pm j1 wij dj

)
iaf1; N ;ng

max

1 nXm
j1

wij dj

To make the objective function of Eq. (3) achieve its maximum value, v1 has to take its upper bound value. That is v 1 1 nXm
j1

iaf1; N ;ng

max

wij dj

Accordingly, the maximum objective function value of Eq. (3) is computed as 0 m X

j1

1 w0j dj A Pm

w A0

@ v 1

Pm
iaf1; N ;ng

j1

max

w0j dj nXm
j1

wij dj

j1

iaf1; N ;ng

max

w0j wj =w1 nXm o w wj =w1 j1 ij w0j wj nXm o:

Pm
iaf1; N ;ng

j1

max

w w j1 ij j

It is obvious that Eq. (14) is more convenient and more practical than model (3) and has no need to solve any programming models. 4. Numerical examples In this section we provide two numerical examples to illustrate the advantages of the proposed DEA/AR model and its potential applications in multiple criteria decision analysis (MCDA). Example 1. Re-examine the pairwise comparison matrices A, B, C, and D in Section 2.

Let w0 = w1,,w6, respectively, and solve the above DEA/AR model. We get the local weight vector of A as (1, 0.734, 0.260, 0.581, 0.942, 0.704), which ranks the six decision criteria or alternatives as C1 C5 C2 C6 C4 C3, where means is preferred to. Such a ranking is consistent with the ranking generated by the eigenvector method (EM), which produces the eigenvector weights (0.289, 0.147, 0.057, 0.128, 0.236, 0.144) for A. After normalization to their maximum, the eigenvector weights become (1, 0.509, 0.198, 0.441, 0.816, 0.498), which is close to the weight vector produced by the DEA/AR model. The DM's subjective preferences can be approximately analyzed as follows. From the pairwise comparison matrix A, it is easy to see that C1 is the most important criterion or alternative because its row elements are all greater than or equal to one and can be removed from the pairwise comparison matrix, leading to a reduced pairwise comparison matrix. In this reduced pairwise comparison matrix, C5 appears as the most important criterion or alternative and should be ranked in the second place. Removing C5 from the further consideration leads to a new further reduced pairwise comparison matrix. From this reduced pairwise comparison matrix, it is observed that C2 is weakly important than C6 because it is seven times as important as C3 while C6 is only six times as important as C3. So, C2 and C6 are respectively the third and fourth most important criteria or alternatives. The left two criteria or alternatives C3 and C4 are very easy to be ranked as C4 C3 in terms of their direct comparisons a34 = 1/5 and a43 = 5. Thus, the ranking of the six criteria or alternatives can be roughly inferred as C1 C5 C2 C6 C4 C3, which is consistent with the ranking generated by the DEA/AR model.

Y.-M. Wang et al. / Decision Support Systems 45 (2008) 913921 Table 2 Local weights of the pairwise comparison matrices (A, B, C, D) produced by different models Comparison matrix w1 w2 1 0.6 0.6 0.6 w3 1 0.2 0.2 0.2 w4 1 w5 1

917

w6 1

A: Local weights produced by the DEAHP model A 1 B 1 C 1 D 1 B: Local weights produced by the eigenvector model (EM) A 0.289 B 0.582 C 0.701 D 0.764

0.147 0.309 0.202 0.149

0.057 0.109 0.097 0.087

0.128

0.236

0.144

C: Local weights produced by the eigenvector model (EM) (rescaled) A 1 0.509 B 1 0.531 C 1 0.288 D 1 0.195 Comparison matrix w1 1 1 1 1 w2 0.734 0.531 0.295 0.213

0.198 0.188 0.139 0.114 w3 0.260 0.188 0.143 0.125

0.441 w4 0.581

0.816 w5 0.942

0.498 w6 0.704

D: Local weights produced by the DEA/AR model A 11.7883 B 3.0556 C 3.6061 D 3.9778

This shows that the DEA/AR model can produce the local weights consistent with the DM's subjective preferences. For the pairwise comparison matrices B, C and D, their local weights produced by the DEA/AR model are all presented in Table 2, from which it can be seen that the weights produced by the DEA/AR model are sensitive enough to the changes of comparison elements b12, c12 and d12. When they vary from 2 to 9, the weight for the second criterion or alternative also changes from 0.531 to 0.213. It is obvious that the DEA/AR model better reects the changes of pairwise comparisons in a pairwise comparison matrix than the DEAHP. To check the information utilized by the two different models, we show in Table 3 the values of decision variables vj (j =1,,n) in different solution processes and different pairwise comparison matrices, from which it can be seen clearly that the DEAHP uses only some of pairwise comparisons for weight derivation. This is the reason why the DEAHP results in too many decision criteria or

alternatives being DEA efcient. However, due to the role or restriction of assurance region, the DEA/AR model is able to use all the pairwise comparison information for priority derivation. This ensures that the DEA/AR model derives rational and logical weights consistent with DMs' subjective judgments. To check further the quality of the local weights derived by the DEA/AR model against the standard eigenvector method, we show in Table 4 the tting performances of the EM, DEAHP and DEA/AR weights for the four pairwise comparison matrices, where the tting performances are measured by the following Euclidean distance: v u X n u1 n X 2 FP t 2 aij wi =wj ; n i1 j1 aij aA; B; C; D: 15

As can be seen from Table 4, the DEA/AR weights perform as well as or even better than the EM weights in tting

Table 3 Information utilization by the DEAHP and DEA/AR model Comparison matrix A Objective function w1 w2 w3 w4 w5 w6 w1 w2 w3 w1 w2 w3 w1 w2 w3 DEAHP v1 0 0 1 0.071 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 v2 0.182 0 0 0 0.2 0 0 0 0 0.2 0 0 0.111 0 0 v3 0 0.143 0 0.133 0 0 0.2 0.2 0.2 0 0.2 0.2 0 0.2 0 v4 0 0 0 0 0 0.333 v5 0.091 0 0 0.265 0 0 v6 0 0 0 0 0 0 DEA/AR model v1 0.085 0.147 0.167 0.167 0.085 0.147 0.333 0.333 0.333 0.290 0.333 0.333 0.333 0.333 0.333 v2 0.073 0.062 0.061 0.061 0.097 0.062 0.176 0.176 0.176 0.097 0.086 0.086 0.059 0.051 0.051 v3 0.027 0.040 0.043 0.043 0.027 0.040 0.062 0.063 0.063 0.045 0.048 0.048 0.027 0.042 0.042 v4 0.036 0.093 0.080 0.080 0.069 0.093 v5 0.136 0.077 0.077 0.077 0.080 0.077 v6 0.038 0.060 0.058 0.058 0.048 0.060

918 Table 4 Fitting performances by different local weights Comparison matrix A B C D CR

Y.-M. Wang et al. / Decision Support Systems 45 (2008) 913921

Fitting performance (FP) by EM weights DEAHP weights 2.0361 0.1160 1.1191 2.4499 DEA/AR weights 1.5793 0.1282 0.9115 1.8041

0.3409 0.0032 0.1169 0.2797

1.6077 0.1282 0.9498 1.8544

To nd out the reasons why the three methods result in two different decision conclusions, we look into the local weights of pairwise comparison matrices and observe their differences among the three methods. From Tables 6 and 7, the following observations have been made: The DEAHP evaluates C3 (Research Experience) and C4 (Skills and Abilities) to be as important as each other and both to be the most important criterion, however, the two selection criteria are not equally important in terms of their pairwise comparisons provided by the interview panel, who put more emphasis on Skills and Abilities than Research Experience. In this sense, the DEAHP overestimates the relative importance of C3, on which Candidate C has the best performance relative to the other two candidates. With respect to C4 (Skills and Abilities), the DEAHP evaluates Candidate C to be as good as Candidate B, but in fact the former performs worse than the latter. This can be veried by the pairwise comparisons between the two candidates. Therefore, the Skills and Abilities of Candidate C is obviously overestimated by the DEAHP. With respect to C5 (Capacity for Career Development), the DEAHP evaluates Candidates A and C to be as good as each other, but in fact Candidate A performs better than Candidate C. This can be veried by the pairwise comparisons between Candidates A and B. In this sense, the Capacity for Career Development of Candidate C is also overestimated. Based upon the above analyses, we have sufcient reasons to believe that the relative importance of Candidate C is overestimated by the DEAHP. So, the selection of Candidate B as the best candidate is appropriate and also more reliable. This shows the fact that the DEA/AR method can provide better decision conclusions than the DEAHP. 5. Conclusions In this paper we have analyzed main drawbacks of the DEAHP and proposed an assurance region DEA model for weight generation in the AHP, which is referred to as DEA/AR model, to overcome the drawbacks of the DEAHP such as counterintuitive local weights for inconsistent pairwise

pairwise comparison matrices. It is also observed that the DEAHP weights perform well for the pairwise comparison matrix B which is nearly perfectly consistent, but poorly for the other inconsistent pairwise comparison matrices. Example 2. A department in a prestigious university needs to recruit a research fellow to conduct a research project for three years. After an initial screening, three candidates are short-listed for interview. The criteria that an interview panel consisting of three professors from the department considers include Qualications (C1), Personal Qualities (C2), Research Experience (C3), Skills and Abilities (C4), and Capacity for Career Development (C5), as shown in Fig. 1. The ve selection criteria are described in details in Table 5. The pairwise comparison matrices for the ve selection criteria and three candidates provided by the interview panel are presented in Tables 6 and 7. If the panel members cannot reach a consensus and disagree with one another on some comparison(s), then their geometric averages or weighted geometric averages should be used for the comparison(s). For the pairwise comparison matrices in Tables 6 and 7, their local weights are computed using three different priority methods: eigenvector method (EM), DEAHP, and DEA/AR method for the purpose of comparison, where the EM weights are normalized in two ways. One is to normalize the EM weights to sum to one and the other is to normalize the EM weights to their maximum. All the local weights are then aggregated using Eq. (14) into global weights. The results are shown in Table 8, from which it is found that the EM and DEA/ AR method both evaluate Candidate B as the best candidate, while the DEAHP evaluates Candidate C as the best.

Fig. 1. Hierarchical structure for recruitment of a research fellow.

Y.-M. Wang et al. / Decision Support Systems 45 (2008) 913921 Table 5 Description of selection criteria Criteria Qualications Personal Qualities Research Experience Description

919

Skills and Abilities

Capacity for Career Development

A postgraduate degree in a relevant subject, ideally a doctorate level degree in a relevant subject. A willingness to undertake further training as appropriate, and to adopt new procedures as and when required. A willingness to work collaboratively in a multi-disciplinary research team. Experience and track record of undertaking research and securing external research funding. A track record of publication in academic peer reviewed journals. Experience of giving oral presentations at academic/non academic conferences and meetings. Excellent written and oral communications and interpersonal skills. Ability to work largely on own initiative with minimum supervisions. Ability to develop a research programme and to write for publication in good research journals. Ability to secure research funding from external sources. Ability to provide tutorial and counselling advice to undergraduate and postgraduate students. An interest in developing an academic career as a management scholar and teacher.

comparison matrices, over insensitivity to some comparisons, information loss in a pairwise comparison matrix, and overestimation of some local weights. We have shown through numerical examples that the proposed DEA/AR model is able to overcome all these drawbacks. For example,
Table 6 Pairwise comparison matrix for ve selection criteria and its local weights Criteria C1 C2 C1 C2 C3 C4 C5 1 2 3 4 2 C3 C4 C5 EM EM weights DEAHP DEA/AR weights (rescaled) weights weights 0.081 0.153 0.255 0.357 0.153 0.226 0.429 0.715 1 0.429 0.25 0.5 1 1 0.5 0.227 0.432 0.718 1 0.432

1/2 1/3 1/4 1/2 1 1/2 1/2 1 2 1 1/2 2 2 2 1 2 1 1/2 1/2 1

Consistency ratio (CR) = 0.012 b 0.1

the DEA/AR model produces true weights for perfectly consistent pairwise comparison matrices and rational, logical and intuitive weights for inconsistent pairwise comparison matrices. It also takes the best advantage of all the pairwise comparison information in a pairwise comparison matrix to avoid any information loss due to the role of assurance region. Through the application to the recruitment of a research fellow for a research project, we have further shown that the DEA/AR model provides better decisions than the DEAHP, which may sometimes overestimate the relative importance of some criteria and/or decision alternatives, leading to the conclusions not very reliable. The DEA/AR model is also easy to use and implement without the need of specifying the assurance region in advance or subjectively, which is determined by the DEA/AR model and pairwise comparison matrices automatically.

Table 7 Pairwise comparison matrices for three candidates with respect to different criteria and their local weights Candidate A Candidate B Candidate C EM weights 0.4 0.2 0.4 EM weights (rescaled) 1 0.5 1 DEAHP weights 1 0.5 1 DEA/AR weights 1 0.5 1

A: Comparisons of three candidates with respect to Qualications (C1) Candidate A 1 2 1 Candidate B 1/2 1 1/2 Candidate C 1 2 1 Consistency Ratio (CR) =0 B: Comparisons of three candidates with respect to Personal Qualities (C2) Candidate A 1 1/2 3 Candidate B 2 1 4 Candidate C 1/3 1/4 1 Consistency Ratio (CR) =0.016 b 0.1

0.320 0.558 0.122

0.572 1 0.218

0.75 1 0.25

0.573 1 0.219

C: Comparisons of three candidates with respect to Research Experience (C3) Candidate A 1 1/3 1/5 0.109 Candidate B 3 1 1/2 0.309 Candidate C 5 2 1 0.582 Consistency Ratio (CR) =0.003 b 0.1 D: Comparisons of three candidates with respect to Skills and Abilities (C4) Candidate A 1 1/2 1/2 Candidate B 2 1 2 Candidate C 2 1/2 1 Consistency Ratio (CR) =0.046 b 0.1

0.188 0.531 1

0.2 0.6 1

0.188 0.531 1

0.196 0.493 0.311

0.397 1 0.630

0.5 1 1

0.4 1 0.633

E: Comparisons of three candidates with respect to Capacity for Career Development (C5) Candidate A 1 5 1 0.498 Candidate B 1/5 1 1/2 0.135 Candidate C 1 2 1 0.367 Consistency Ratio (CR) =0.081 b 0.1

1 0.271 0.737

1 0.5 1

1 0.275 0.750

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Y.-M. Wang et al. / Decision Support Systems 45 (2008) 913921

Table 8 Global weights of three candidates with respect to the total goal C1 C2 C3 0.255 0.109 0.309 0.582 C4 0.357 0.196 0.493 0.311 C5 0.153 0.498 0.135 0.367 Global weights

A: Global weights of three candidates by the eigenvector method (EM) Local weights of criteria 0.081 0.153 Candidate A 0.400 0.320 Candidate B 0.200 0.558 Candidate C 0.400 0.122 B: Global weights of three candidates by the EM method (Rescaled) Local weights of criteria 0.226 0.429 Candidate A 1.000 0.572 Candidate B 0.500 1.000 Candidate C 1.000 0.218 C: Global weights of three candidates by the DEAHP Local weights of criteria 0.25 Candidate A 1 Candidate B 0.5 Candidate C 1

0.256 0.378 0.367

0.715 0.188 0.531 1.000

1.000 0.397 1.000 0.630

0.429 1.000 0.271 0.737

Non-normalized 1.433 2.039 1.981

Normalized 0.703 1.000 0.972

0.5 0.75 1 0.25

1 0.2 0.6 1

1 0.5 1 1

0.5 1 0.5 1

Non-normalized 1.825 2.475 2.875

Normalized 0.635 0.861 1.000

D: Global weights of three candidates by the DEA/AR method Local weights of criteria 0.227 0.432 Candidate A 1 0.573 Candidate B 0.5 1 Candidate C 1 0.219

0.718 0.188 0.531 1

1 0.4 1 0.633

0.432 1 0.275 0.75

Non-normalized 1.442 2.046 1.997

Normalized 0.705 1.000 0.976

Compared with the well-known EM, the DEA/AR model is linear rather than nonlinear and is therefore easier to solve. These good features make the DEA/AR model very practical and attractive. It is expected that the DEA/AR model can nd more potential applications in the near future. Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank the Editor-in-Chief and three anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and suggestions which are very helpful in improving the paper. References
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Dr. Ying-Ming Wang is a Professor of Management Science in the School of Public Administration, Fuzhou University, PR China. He received his BEng degree in Industrial Electric Automation from Jiangsu University of Science and Technology in 1984, MEng and PhD degrees both in Systems Engineering, respectively, from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in 1987 and Southeast University in 1991. His research interests include multiple attribute decision analysis (MADA), data envelopment analysis (DEA), analytic hierarchy process (AHP), evidential reasoning (ER) approach, quality function deployment (QFD), and failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA). He has published nearly 150 academic papers in a wide variety of peer reviewed journals such as European Journal of Operational Research, Fuzzy Sets and Systems, Computers and Operations Research, Information Sciences, Expert Systems with Applications, Decision Support Systems, Journal of the Operational Research Society, Computers & Industrial Engineering, Journal of Computational and Applied Mathematics, Applied Mathematics and Computation, Applied Mathematical Modelling and so on.

Y.-M. Wang et al. / Decision Support Systems 45 (2008) 913921 Dr. Kwai-Sang Chin is an associate professor at the Department of Manufacturing Engineering & Engineering Management, City University of Hong Kong. He is a Charter Engineer in UK, a Registered Professional Engineer in Hong Kong, a Fellow Member of the Hong Kong Society for Quality and Hong Kong Quality Management Association, the Programme Leader of the MSc Engineering Management programme in the Department. He maintains intensive collaboration with industries through various consultancy work, training courses and industrial projects. His current research interests are Quality Management Strategies Beyond ISO9000 for Hong Kong and China and Decision Support Methodologies/Systems for New Product Innovations and Development. He has published a signicant number of papers in peer reviewed journals such as IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, European Journal of Operational Research, Information Sciences, Expert Systems with Applications, International Journal of Production Research, International Journal of Quality and Reliability Management, Industrial Management and Data Systems, International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology, Total Quality Management, Industrial Marketing Management, and the like.

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Dr. Gary POON Ka Kwai is currently a lecturer at the Department of Manufacturing Engineering & Engineering Management, City University of Hong Kong, teaching Quality and Reliability Engineering, and Environmental Management. His research interests include the characterization of electronics manufacturing processes, quality and environmental management. He is a Senior Member of the Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE), Member of the Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET) and the American Society of Quality (ASQ), and a Chartered Engineer.