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Making appropriate decisions concerning the ongoing management of existing built facilities is an important activity for property and facilities managers. Such decisions comprise multiple criteria, and the relative importance of these criteria typically reflects the implicit preferences or biases of the decision maker(s). This paper seeks to apply a new property management 3D decision model known as iconCUR to investigate the impact of criterion weights on the decision to intervene.

A retrospective case study of a real project in Sydney (Australia) that underwent adaptive reuse transformation in 2008 is used to test the sensitivity of implied decision‐maker preferences in practice.

It is found that significant change to individual criterion weights relating to aspects of building condition, space utilization and triple bottom line reward has minimal influence on the derived spatial coordinates that underpin the 3D decision model and hence the recommended intervention strategy in the particular case studied.

It is further suggested that changes in criterion weights over time as expectations and situations may dictate can be accommodated without undermining the integrity of the decision‐making process.

The deployment of this type of approach, at least, documents the decision‐making process involved in important property management strategies and exposes the frequently implicit preferences of decision makers. These preferences are shown not to be as critical as might have been suspected. This may add further confidence to the use of MCDA in facilities management decisions.

This chapter points out that the use of a wide range of theoretical paradigms in marketing research requires researchers to use a broad range of methodologies. As an aid in doing so, the chapter argues for the use of case study research (CSR), defines CSR, and describes several CSR theories and methods that are useful for describing, explaining, and forecasting processes occurring in business-to-business (B2B) contexts. The discussion includes summaries of six B2B case studies spanning more than 60 years of research. This chapter advocates embracing the view that learning and reporting objective realities of B2B processes is possible using CSR methods. CSR methods in the chapter include using multiple interviews (2 + ) separately of multiple persons participating in B2B processes, direct research and participant observation, decision systems analysis, degrees-of-freedom analysis, ethnographic-decision-tree-modeling, content analysis, and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fs/QCA.com). The discussion advocates rejecting the dominant logic of attempting to describe and explain B2B processes by arms-length fixed-point surveys that usually involve responses from one executive per firm with no data-matching of firms in specific B2B relationships – such surveys lack details and accuracy necessary for understanding, describing, and forecasting B2B processes.

In this chapter, I analyze former US president Barack Obama’s foreign policy decision-making process during his two terms of presidency between the years 2008 and 2016. The analysis covers six decisions with an emphasis on decisions concerning conflicts that embodied a potential for the use of force.

Using the Applied Decision Analysis (ADA) method, I find that Barack Obama’s decision-making pattern in these decisions fits the poliheuristic decision theory, where the domestic politics dimension constitutes a non-compensatory dimension. By understanding President Obama’s use of the poliheuristic decision code, this study can offer an explanation to his willingness to use force in some cases, and his avoidance of the use of force in others.

The purpose of this paper to address the challenges on “what should the management plan for organization development (OD) toward becoming an innovative organization?”

This study applies the concept of innovation management, maturity model and roadmapping. The confirmatory factor analysis and the multi-criteria decision analysis are applied as the methodologies to evaluate the relative importance of each influencing factor and to assess the areas needed for improvement, respectively. A case example is also included to demonstrate how the proposed approach can be applied.

Comparing the assessment result and the strategic target defined by the management, the gaps can be diagnosed and then a roadmap guiding OD can be proposed based on a firm’s strategy for improvement.

This study proposes the approach and assessment model. Different companies always have their unique focus, so the management team have to modify the assessment model by following the proposed approach. Future research should be conducted to assess the effectiveness of each activity in increasing the level of innovativeness.

Ineffective development could result from setting a strategic direction and resource allocation based on the intuitive decisions of the management team. Therefore, it would be much better if the management team can systematically assess the current status and diagnose the areas needed for improvement to set an appropriate strategic direction.

The analytical approach to develop a strategic roadmap guiding a firm to become an innovative organization has not been presented in the existing literature.

Key performance indicators (KPIs) of maintenance systems serve as benchmarks to workers and organizations to compare their goals for decision-making purposes. Unfortunately, the effects of one KPI on the other are least known, restraining decisions on prioritization of KPIs. This article examines and prioritizes the KPIs of the maintenance system in a food processing industry using the novel Taguchi (T) scheme-decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) method, Taguchi–Pareto (TP) scheme–DEMATEL method and the DEMATEL method.

The causal association of maintenance process parameters (frequency of failure, downtime, MTTR, MTBF, availability and MTTF) was studied. Besides, the optimized maintenance parameters were infused into the DEMATEL method that translates the optimized values into cause and effect responses and keeping in view the result of analysis. Data collection was done from a food processing plant in Nigeria.

The results indicated that downtime and availability have the most causal effects on other criteria when DEMATEL and T-DEMATEL methods were respectively applied to the problem. Furthermore, the frequency of failure is mostly affected by other criteria in the key performance indication selection using the two methods. The combined Taguchi scheme and DEMATEL method is appropriate to optimize and establish the causal relationships of factors.

Hardly any studies have reported the joint optimization and causal relationship of maintenance system parameters. However, the current study achieves this goal using the T-DEMATEL, TP-DEMATEL and DEMATEL methods for the first time. The applied methods effectively ease decisions on prioritization of KPIs for enhancement.

This paper aims to investigate two causality concepts, sphere of control (SOC) and agent–action–results (AAR), and their potential applications to construction business ethics. SOC is used in ethics training, and AAR is applied to ethical decision-making (EDM).

A framework of ethics training and a framework of EDM for construction companies have been developed. Interviews were conducted with experienced construction engineers and PhD ethicians to test the validity of the EDM framework.

Literature review has been conducted in ethical issues, ethics training and EDM, leading to the developments of the frameworks. The framework of ethics training incorporates SOC to reflect the ethicality and personality traits. The framework of EDM is based on AAR, combined with a stakeholder approach and Kohlberg’s cognitive moral development theory, with a review from EDM models in business. Both frameworks include project-level component to reflect the unique feature of the construction industry. The framework of EDM showed a good practicality through the interviews on an ethical dilemma example.

For the ethics training framework, a long-term observation or survey should be accompanied to evaluate the framework in detail, tracing the improvement of ethicalness of course participants.

The customized ethics training will be more efficient and effective, as it considers individual ethicality. The scoring system of the EDM framework is simple and practical. This is particularly relevant for construction ethics management, considering that most of construction practitioners are engineers, not philosophers or psychologists.

Applying causality concepts, SOC and AAR, to construction ethics is a novel approach in construction management. This research has made a good advancement in construction ethics management by providing the right directions to be explored in these new areas.

Methods and techniques of aggregating preferences or priorities in the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) usually ignore variation or dispersion among experts and are vulnerable to extreme values (generated by particular viewpoints or experts trying to distort the final ranking). The purpose of this paper is to propose a modelling approach and a graphical representation to characterize inconsistency and disagreement in the group decision making in the AHP.

The authors apply a regression approach for estimating the decision weights of the AHP using linear mixed models (LMM). They also test the linear mixed model and the multi‐dimensional scaling graphical display using a case of strategic performance management in education.

In addition to determining the weight vectors, this model also allows the authors to decompose the variation or uncertainty in experts' judgment. Well‐known statistical theories can estimate and rigorously test disagreement among experts, the residual uncertainty due to rounding errors in AHP scale, and the inconsistency within individual experts' judgments. Other than characterizing different sources of uncertainty, this model allows the authors to rigorously test other factors that might significantly affect weight assessments.

This study provides a model to better characterize different sources of uncertainty. This approach can improve decision quality by allowing analysts to view the aggregated judgments in a proper context and pinpoint the uncertain component that significantly affects decisions.

Globalization and digitalization have led to the need for a different view of international business. Computer technology, especially in the form of enterprise systems, presents the opportunity to apply best (or at least better) practices. Twentieth century enterprise systems were focused on internal optimization. Twenty‐first century enterprise systems need to be much more open, and to focus on the demand chain, driven by serving customers better. To better fulfill this need, this paper aims to present a method for evaluation of business process alternatives focusing on demand chain needs.

A method integrating decision making and system approach principles is presented that includes use of soft systems approaches to identify goals and interrelationships among system parts, generation of alternatives, analysis of alternative performance on goals, refining alternatives to better satisfy goals, and multiple criteria selection analysis to recommend choice.

The method is demonstrated on a small business process design. This process can allow broader consideration of organizational goals and focus on customer demands.

The paper demonstrates how such a method might work to better support the design of enterprise systems in this dynamic new environment.

The chapter uses the poliheuristic theory of decision to explain decision-making in Turkish foreign policy since the outbreak of the civil war in Syria in 2011 and until the end of 2012. Six decisions of Turkey’s leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan are analyzed. The results provide strong support for the poliheuristic theory of decision and the importance of political calculations in Erdoğan’s calculus of decision.