Constructing organisational preferences: a study of within-criterion weighting

Many Decision Analysis interventions can be thought of as helping people to discuss what constitutes value for their organization. One approach to Decision Analysis which takes this view particularly seriously is Decision Conferencing, where valuations assessed locally within particular organizational units may require the assessment of “within-criterion weights” to arrive at a global value scale. The Within-criterion weighting (WCW) process presupposes that organizational preferences can be represented as an additive value model, and as such, the formal conditions for the validity of the approach echo the standard conditions underlying additive separability in Multi-Attribute Value Theory. However, in WCW the dimensions on which the objects of choice are assessed correspond to the organizational unit doing the assessment, rather than organizational objectives. We illustrate the significance of this point by developing an error model approach to exploring a key structuring decision in a decision conferencing intervention which has no natural multi-attribute interpretation.