Consensus Building Process in Group Decision Making—An Adaptive Procedure Based on Group Dynamics

Abstract

In group decision making (GDM) problems, it is critical to arrive at an acceptable level of consensus in a group for a stable and implementable decision. This process is carried out by a moderator (either real or virtual) who advises the members to change their opinions in order to achieve higher consensus in the group. In this paper, we present an algorithm that maps the consensus evolution process of GDM based on interrelationships of members in the group. The members’ views are taken in linguistic form to incorporate qualitative aspects and vagueness, if any, in their judgment. The novelty of this work lies in the computation of shift in members’ opinions depending on their level of adoption of other ideas and support of their ideas in the group. The algorithm accounts for the relations among the members based on their earlier interactions in a network and support of their views contextual to a specific problem. The conditions governing the impact of level of adoption and support in the group are explicated using fuzzy if–then rules. The proposed algorithm converges after a finite number of iterations and maintains consistency in the members’ opinions throughout the process.