A stakeholder approach to MCDA

Research into quantitative decision-making has undeniably made considerable progress in recent years, having gone from coping with single decision-maker, single criterion to multiple decision-makers, multiple criteria decisions situations. Suitable mathematical methods and instruments have been perfected and are now quite sophisticated. Moreover, they are often supported by a powerful software. However, most decision situations require that the systemic socio-political aspects of the decision processes be taken into account and the methods and instruments developed so far may not be satisfactory in this regard. This paper presents a proposition that is aimed at improving this situation. It is based on the concept of stakeholder which, in our view, should be more directly incorporated into any multiple criteria decision aid (MCDA) approach. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.