¹University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

Correspondence: C M Brugha, Department of Management Information Systems, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland. E-mail: Cathal.Brugha@ucd.ie

Received June 1999; Accepted April 2004; Published online 9 June 2004.

Abstract

Multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) is presented as an eight-stage process of shaping information that satisfies the following criteria. The information should be accessible, differentiable, abstractable, understandable, verifiable, measurable, refinable and usable. For some stages, the decision-advisor should emphasize doing the stage convincingly by carrying out first its technical aspects, then relating to the context of the problem, and finally by taking into account the particular situation of the decision. For others, the decision-advisor should emphasize evincing information from the decision-maker first by relating to the situation of the decision, then seeing it in its context, and finally in its technical aspects. Methods for supporting the first four stages are shown to be personal construct theory for accessing the information, grounded theory for differentiating clusters of constructs, critical realism for abstracting their real meaning, and Nomology to understand how they fit into the criteria tree. An illustration is given.