THE EVALUATION OF CONFLICTS’ DEGREE IN GROUP DECISION MAKING

In group decision making conflicts arise from the fact that individuals or groups of individuals have often different opinions about problems’ solutions. These conflicts might have various degrees ranging from almost complete agreement to an absolute opposition of two equally strong sides. The aim of this article is to extend the evaluation of conflicts’ degree introduced by Z. Pawlak and others originally in the rough set theory context. The scope of this generalization embraces an arbitrary number of groups or individuals involved in a conflict, an arbitrary number of their attitudes as well as different degrees of agreement or disagreement on an issue (fuzzy conflicts). The evaluation of a conflict degree is divided into two levels, as both conflict situation as a whole and each individual in a conflict can be evaluated. The proposed measures of conflicts’ degree can be used in initial stages of decision making processes to the quantitative evaluation of conflict intensity, so they can provide useful information for a conflict potential resolution; and also, they might help to describe conflicts’ dynamics. Numerical examples of the evaluation of conflics’ degree are provided as well.