Value of agreement in decision analysis: concept, measures and application

In multi-criteria decision analysis workshops, participants often appraise the options individually before discussing the scoring as a group. The individual appraisals lead to score ranges within which the group then seeks the necessary agreement to identify their preferred option. Preference programming enables some options to be identified as dominated even before the group agrees on a precise scoring for them. Workshop participants usually face time pressure to make a decision. Decision support can be provided by flagging options for which further agreement on their scores seems particularly valuable. By valuable, we mean the opportunity to identify other options as dominated (using preference programming) without having their precise scores agreed beforehand. The present paper quantifies this Value of Agreement and extends the concept to portfolio decision analysis and criterion weights. The new concept is validated through a case study in recruitment.