Introduction

Decision making is a substantial interpersonal skill that any project manager should possess. A
Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide) Fourth Edition, the
most widely accepted project management standard, introduces decision making in Appendix G
Interpersonal Skills / chapter G6 (PMI, 2008, p 420). However, PMBOK Guide refers also to
decisions that have to be taken in many project management processes. Indicative examples are
go/no go decisions, initiate a phase or not, make or buy, project prioritization, etc. According to
PMBOK Guide project managers and project teams use a decision making process such as the
six-phase model shown in Exhibit 1.

Exhibit 1 - Six-phase decision model as appears in PMBOK Guide

The present study focuses on the third step concerning the Ideas to action where projects teams
need to define the criteria, rate the pros and cons of the alternatives and select the best among
them. Particularly, special attention is given to the group decision making processes since most
organizational decisions, especially the complex ones, are made by groups rather than
individuals. It is, however, sometimes difficult to know when to involve others in the decision-
making process and to what degree. Practice and research have revealed that groups outperform
individuals working in isolation since groups solutions to problems are typically of higher
quality. The advantages of groups decisions over an individuals have been widely studied in
literature. One obvious explanation is that groups can pool information and abilities and thus
gain access to a collection of knowledge that is superior to that of any single individual. This
knowledge enables the group to reject incorrect approaches and provides a check on the
possibility of committing errors. Being in a group also tends to motivate and inspire group
members by enhancing their level of contribution. As a result, they tend to be more accepting of
the decision and share the responsibility. Also those who may not have contributed still do not
tend to oppose to it as the group has come to this decision.

However, there are also several potential disadvantages of group decision making. For example,
highly cohesive groups sometimes encourage a restricted view of alternatives, known as
groupthink. Groups may also polarize toward extreme points of view if an appreciable element
of risk is involved. In other words, group members tend to feed off of each other's fears or
enthusiasm, and can make what researchers refer to as risky shifts and cautious shifts. Another
potential problem is that group decision making tends to be much more costly than individual
decision-making. Given the time and energy that meetings can consume, it is usually best to
reserve group decision making for more important decisions that require high-quality solutions.
In addition, decision-making in groups tends to be influenced by the relative status of group
members. Thus, when a group member who possesses relatively little status offers an objectively
good suggestion, it may be rejected. But if the same suggestion is offered by a group member
with high status, the likelihood of its being adopted is greatly increased.

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Problem Statement and Proposed Approach

Group Decision Making

The difference between making a decision alone and making a group decision is large. The
interaction can distill the best out of each member, creating better resonance of ideas and
synthesis of view-points. This is mainly because groups can represent a larger and more diverse
set of perspectives and constituencies, thus being more fair (Tyler & Smith, 1998). Moreover,
the idea that two heads are better than one is widespread and typically accurate, based on the
empirical record (Bonner, 2004). Especially, group decision making in projects can be an
effective management tool as people tend to resist what is forced upon them and support what
they help to create. On the other hand, group decision processes have proven sometimes elusive,
difficult to understand and truly complex. One of the principle difficulties with making decisions
in groups is deciding how to make the decision! There are several alternatives to consider as:
should the leader just ask the group and make the decision? Should the leader delegate the
decision to some members of the group? Should the group make the decision through some form
of majority vote? Should all decisions involving the group be made by consensus?

The Vroom-Yetton leadership model (Vroom & Yetton, 1973) suggests that the decision making
style should take into consideration three factors:

the quality (or correctness) of the decision, for those decisions that involve a high degree
of expertise,

the required level of commitment to the decision by the group members and

the time available to make the decision.

There are four well-known styles for group decision making which can be used within different
decision environments, encompassing specific advantages and disadvantages (Exhibit 2). When
using the command style the leader makes a decision for a group with little or no input from the
members of that group. The group members may provide specific information on request, but are
not asked to contribute towards finding a solution. When using the consultative style the leader
seeks input and advice from the group before making a decision for a group, but then makes the
final decision him/herself. When using the consensus style the leader seeks input and advice from
a group and works through the decision making process with the group, until every member of
the group can live with the final decision that is made. When using the majority vote the
decision is made by selecting the alternative which has the more votes from the members of the
group.

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Exhibit 2 - Styles of group decision making

Multi Criteria Decision Analysis

The problem seems to be even harder when, as usual, the decision involves multiple conflicting
criteria. Within the field of Operations Research many Multicriteria Decision Analysis (MCDA)
methods have been developed. Some of the most popular are the Analytic Hierarchy and
Network Profcess (AHP, ANP), the Outranking methods, such as the ELECTRE, Multiattibute
Utility Theory (MAUT), Fuzzy sets and Mathematical Programming models. Although the
number of MCDA methods is very high and still increasing, there is no specific, generally
accepted, method for every problem as each problem is unique. They all require the definition of

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options, criteria, and most of them demand a measure for assessing the relative significance of
each criterion to the other criteria (Belton & Stewart, 2002; Peniwati, 2005). They differ,
however, in terms of how they combine the data (DETR, 2000). Choosing one method out of all
the existing ones is itself a multicriteria task, as different aims are involved (appropriateness of
the data and the structure of the problem, method applicability, acceptance of the decision etc.).
In the context of the present forum the ANP will be used as it is easy to understand, takes into
account both tangible and intangible criteria, it is friendly to use and matches the human thinking
(Kirytopoulos, D.Voulgaridou & V. Voulgaridou, 2008). It is underlined here that the focus of the
Forum is on the group decision making rather than the method itself.

The Analytic Network Process

The Analytic Network Process is a generalization of the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP)
developed by Thomas Saaty (1996). ANP incorporates feedback and interdependent relationships
among decision criteria and alternatives and provides a general framework to deal with decisions
without making assumptions about the independence of higher level elements from lower level
elements or the independence of the elements within a level as in AHP. In fact, the ANP uses a
network of elements without need to specify levels (Saaty, 2005). Technically, the model consists
of clusters and elements. As in the AHP, the dominance or relative importance of influence is the
central concept and judgments are provided from the fundamental scale of the AHP (Saaty, 2005)
by answering the question: Given a criterion X, which of the two elements Y,Z is more dominant
with respect to that criterion? In order for the influences among the elements to be meaningful at
the final stage of the method (synthesis), a specific element, each time, is used to perform the
pairwise comparisons. This element is called control criterion. In short, the ANP approach
handles interdependence among elements by obtaining the composite weights through the
development of a supermatrix.

The group decision-making process in the ANP involves the construction of pairwise comparison
matrices at each level of network either by consensus voting or by aggregating the individual
preferences (Saaty, 1989). In the consensus voting approach all group members agree upon the
values for each comparison judgment. If the group is unwilling or unable to vote or cannot
achieve a consensus, then a compromise group solution can be obtained by combining the
individual preferences into aggregated group preferences. Forman and Peniwati (1998) showed
that the group prioritization methods in the ANP/AHP apply two basic techniques for
aggregating the individual preferences into a group preference, depending on whether the group
wants to act together as a unit or as separate individuals, and specify two aggregation
approaches, the Aggregating individual judgements (AIJ) and the Aggregating individual
priorities (AIP). The weighted arithmetic mean (WAM) and the geometric mean (GM)
mathematical procedures are commonly used to determine group preferences for both the AIJ
and AIP aggregation approaches. Aczel and Saaty (1983) claim that only the GM is an
appropriate procedure as it preserves the reciprocal properties of the aggregated pairwise
comparison matrices. Forman and Peniwati (1998) also state that the GM should be used for AIJ,
as for AIP either the WAM or GM are meaningful procedures, satisfying the Pareto optimality
principle. Lately, a third approach the weighted geometric mean (WGM) has been considered to
be the optimal procedure (Levy and Taji, 2007).

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Forum description and implementation

General Description of the Decision Problem

The decision problem that the PMI Global Congress 2010 EMEA attendees will be asked to
analyze concerns the selection of the host city for one of the forthcoming PMI EMEA
congresses. The PMI EMEAs congress is one of the biggest professional gatherings of its type,
with a continually growing attendance. As a result, the logistics involved in the organization of
the congress are gigantic. Arrangements must usually be made many months in advance. A
successful conference is one where a large number of members attend and where all services
match the expectances of attendees. The specific decision environment is considered appropriate
as it falls within the knowledge and experience of all attendees, while some of them, hopefully,
might be able to provide further insights, in case they have themselves participated in any
conference organizing committee. The group decision making processes that will be followed are
depicted in Exhibit 3 and analyzed hereafter.

Exhibit 3 - Forum implementation steps

Group decision making processes

Creation of four groups of Decision Makers (DM)

According to the number of the attendees four groups of DMs will be formed. Those that have
previously organized conferences will join the same group and will be considered as experts.

Definition of the Alternatives

The alternatives, namely the candidate host cities will be announced to the groups with little
input from them, as described in the command style (refer to Exhibit 2).

Definition of Criteria

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The attendees will define as a group the decision criteria. In order to do so they will be
encouraged to utilize the consultative style of group decision making, as described above (refer
to Exhibit 2).

Pair wise Comparisons

The pair wise comparisons are used to obtain the dominance or relative importance of influence
by using the fundamental scale of the AHP (Saaty, 2005). The questions that each group will
need to answer are formed as follows: Given a criterion X, which of the two elements Y, Z is
more dominant with respect to that criterion? The fundamental scale of AHP includes intensity
from 1 to 9, with 1 meaning equal importance and 9 extreme importance. For reasons of brevity
and economy of time the attendees will be asked to perform the pairwise comparisons with
respect only to the alternatives by using the intensities 1 (equal importance), 4 (moderate) and 7
(strong). For instance, the comparison matrix of all the alternatives with respect to the criterion
site-seeing could look like Exhibit 4. That means that with respect to the criterion site-seeing
City 2 is moderately (4) better than City 1 and so on.

Exhibit 4 Comparison of Alternatives with respect to Site-seeing

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