Evaluating Appointment of Division Managers Using Fuzzy Multiple Attribute Decision Making

Abstract

Subsidiaries typically start out as a company division. As the company expands its product lines, the regions it operates in, or the customers it serves, the company is likely to combine the related research and development, procurement, production, and sales departments into a relatively discrete organizational structure. As such, the head of the division is often of equal importance as the company president. In particular, when the product has a competitive advantage, the head of the division has more authority in the company’s future operational planning. Thus, when a company has a multidivisional organizational structure, the heads of those divisions typically have considerable responsibilities. In this study, literature data were combined with a fuzzy Delphi expert questionnaire survey to determine the constructs and criteria for assessing candidates for division manager. Subsequently, the fuzzy decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) and the fuzzy DEMATEL-based analytic network process were used to identify the causal relationships between criteria and their weights, and the fuzzy technique for the order of preference by similarity to ideal solution was used to rank the solutions to approximate the company’s optimal candidate for division manager and provide the ideal decision-making solutions, which may offer companies with the reference of selecting the senior executives.