A STAKEHOLDER APPROACH TO MCDA

Research into quantitative decision-making has undeniably made conside rable progress in recent years, having gone from coping with single de cision-maker, single criterion to multiple decision-makers, multiple c riteria decisions situations. Suitable mathematical methods and instru ments have been perfected and are now quite sophisticated. Moreover, t hey are often supported by a powerful software. However, most decision situations require that the systemic socio-political aspects of the d ecision processes be taken into account and the methods and instrument s developed so far may not be satisfactory in this regard. This paper presents a proposition that is aimed at improving this situation. It i s based on the concept of stakeholder which, in our view, should be mo re directly incorporated into any multiple criteria decision aid (MCDA ) approach. (C) 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.