A LINGUISTIC MODELING OF CONSENSUS IN GROUP DECISION-MAKING BASED ON OWA OPERATORS

In this paper, a model for Group Decision Making is proposed and defin ed in a linguistic context. A multi-person multi-criteria decision pro blem is considered, in which a group of experts is involved in the eva luation of the performances of a set of alternatives with respect to a predefined set of criteria. The objective is to evaluate a consensual judgement and a consensus degree on each alternative. Both the expert s' evaluations of the alternatives and the degree of consensus are exp ressed linguistically. A ''soft'' consensus degree referred to a fuzzy majority of the experts is proposed based on the concept of linguisti c quantifier. The entire process is defined in a linguistic domain and modeled within fuzzy set theory of Ordered Weighted Average (OWA) ope rators.