# 175

Dear He Huang, Shary Heuninckx, Cathy Macharis

I read your paper:

20 years review of the multi actor multi criteria analysis (MAMCA) framework: a proposition of a systematic guideline

My comments:

1- In the abstract you say “emergence of stakeholder-based multi-criteria group decision making (MCGDM) frameworks. However, traditional MCGDM frequently overlooks the interactions and trade-offs among different actors and criteria”

I completely agree with this possibly most important feature in MCDM, as is interaction, that 99% of methods ignore. They prefer to work as if criteria were independent entities and then, adding up results. MCDM does not work with the concept that the result is A U B or sum, when it should be A ∩ B or intersection.

I have been claiming this for years in RG, and yours is the first paper I read that addresses it

Your paper also addresses the very important issue that the stakeholder who decide the alternatives, projects or options as well as the criteria they are subject to.

2- Page 2 “it is necessary to involve more than one decision maker (DM) to appraise the possible alternatives in the interest of, for example, diverse perspectives, increased acceptance of decision, and reduced bias”

In my opinion, the DM, in the first stage of the process, is only an instrument that receives information and demands form the stakeholders, translates them to the decision matrix, and selects the MCDM method.

His most Important function is to analyze the result, make corrections as per his/her know-how and expertise., and recommend the solution to the stakeholders. They are the decision-makers.

3- Page 2 “. The stakeholders can be defined as individuals or interest groups that have vested interests in the outcome of a particular issue or the decision being considered (Freeman et al. 2010).”

Absolutely correct, because each one is responsible for an area of the project. This is the people that know what is needed or wished, and you also emphasise it.

4- Page 3 “The original objective of MAMCA is to help actors understand the preferences and priorities of all relevant stakeholders, and to identify and evaluate different alternative solutions for which a consensus can be reached (Macharis & Bernardini, 2015). It is a decision-support framework with ’stakeholder involvement’ as a keyword”.

5- In my opinion, the word ‘preferences’ should be banned in MCDM. Normally, a stakeholder does not have preferences. A production manager does not have preference to fabricate a product A or product B, or on the importance of each product; he follows instructions on a plan that has been decided at the highest levels. It is absurd to think for instance that rejects are 3 times more important than quality, when this comes from a person that possibly does not have the faintest idea on production. The stakeholder has a production plan and has to comply with it.

In my opinion, and after reading hundreds of papers I realized that many authors have only a theoretical vision of the problem and ignore the reality, and try to solve a problem that is only in papers.

Another for me inappropriate word is “consensus”. IN MCDM consensus is a weird word, because most of the time there is a fight among the different stakeholders and components, where some must give and others receive.

In 1974 Zeleny defined the MCDM problem as a ‘compromise’, a balance between all parts, and that is only possible using a MCDM method, that is, it is the method which for example, must decrease a production goal to satisfy another goal as is the financial objective of a return of say 6 %. It is impossible for a human being to consider all the hundreds of interactions necessary to reach a balanced solution.

The MCDM knows nothing about consensus, but knows how to find an equilibrium or balance for the whole system

6- Page 4 “The most relevant criteria are selected for every stakeholder and weights are elicited that reflect their importance”

I am afraid I don’t concur on weights. Weights are useful to quantify the relative importance of criteria, using either subjective or objective procedures.

In the first kind, they are useless in MCDM, while in the second kind they are very useful. In countless publications as in yours, it is said that there is fundamental in MCDM. This is an intuitive concept without any mathematical support.

I however agree that in general, in most projects, criteria have different importance, no doubt about it, and that the experience of the DM is valuable, and it must be incorporated in the MCDM process, but at the right time and in the proper mode.

Just think that criteria are linear equations and as that, subject to the laws of lineal algebra.

Linear equations can be graphically represented as straight lines in a x-y graphic, and have different slopes that depend on their two values.

When you apply a weight to a criterion it multiplies each value within it. This provokes that a criterion line displaces parallel to itself, but the distances between values are preserved. When this is done for other criteria, that are multiplied by different weight values, the respective lines displace parallel to themselves, because in each one the distance between values is the same.

What is not the same is the existing distance between two criteria, because they depend on the different weight values. As can be seen, there is nothing in these weights that are used to evaluate alternatives.

It is different with entropy, where each criterion obtains an entropic value that quantitatively informs the degree of dispersion between the values. It is precisely this property what makes them useful, because a criterion with high entropy denote a closeness of the criterion distances between values.

The complement to 1 indicates the amount of information each criterion has to evaluate alternatives, that is, the Shannon Theorem.

Therefore, weights only show the geometrical displacement of a whole criterion, while entropy shows the discrimination of values withing each criterion.

7- Page 4 “Different MCDM methods can be used, like for example analytic hierarchy process (AHP)”

You are contradicting yourself when at the beginning you talk about interaction and now, you mention using AHP where interaction is not allowed (Saaty dixit, not me)

8- “A primary difference lies in MAMCA’s high regard for stakeholder autonomy; stakeholders are empowered to introduce criteria that reflect their interests and to evaluate alternatives based on personal preferences”

9- I agree excerpt in the word ‘preferences’

I do not know you, but I have worked in project management and in several countries, in large hydro, mining, oil, paper, and metallurgical projects, assisting at many meetings and I do not remember that somebody was asking or expressing preferences.

We were the stakeholdersand as other fellows, I was just following the direction from the highest levels. Of course, they were open discussions and everybody was free to express his opinions. Nobody was saying that “my preferences are…..”

Where the scholars in MCDM got that preference word? We expressed the needs in our own departments, and our opinions, discusssd with other colleagues, usually the financial guy, about what we need and explain why, and usually it was the project manager who closed the discussion trlough his own opinion

This is how the real world works, not with classroom examples. From there the DM must consider without discussion what each manager said, and put it in a matrix format. Normally the DM has no authority to decide if criterion environment is less or more important than criterion transportation. A DM is a specialist in decision making, involving, mathematics, knowledge, and experience on other projects, similar or not,something than in general is unknown to stakeholders. Thus, each one must operate in his own field: the stakeholders provide information and needs, and the DM process that, analyzes the result, modify it if necessary, and submit it to stakeholders.

Imagine that if in his/her presentation, the DM is interrupted by a stakeholder, asking for the origin of data in the matrix, and the DM responds that come from pair-wise comparison and thus, involving intuition. What do you think would be the reaction of the stakeholder other than incredulity on what he is hearing? I certainly know what would be mine

These are some of my comments. Hope they can be of service

Nolberto Munier