An extension of fuzzy TOPSIS for personnel selection Alecos M. Kelemenis School of Electrical and Computer Engineering National Technical University of Athens Athens, Greece akel@epu.ntua.gr D. Th. Askounis School of Electrical and Computer Engineering National Technical University of Athens Athens, Greece askous@epu.ntua.gr Abstract—Considering the fact that contemporary business settings call for work in groups, team selection and formation is a crucial parameter for the smooth function and therefore the achievement of the specific team and business objectives. The problem of team selection members is particularly complex due to the variety of factors and criteria that need to be taken into consideration. Thus, highlighting the complexity in selecting team members, this paper proposes a multi criteria approach to deal with group decision making under fuzzy environment. A Multi Criteria Decision Making Approach (the fuzzy TOPSIS) for group decision making is considered, incorporating a new measurement, which reflects the minimum requirements of the decision makers for each criterion. In this respect, a new reference point is introduced, apart from the Positive Ideal Solution and the Negative Ideal Solution. Finally, an illustrative example of the proposed approach is presented for the selection of a middle level consulting manager. Keywords—multi criteria decision making, veto threshold, fuzzy TOPSIS, personnel selection I. INTRODUCTION The current conditions of intent global competition and the rapid changes in the business scene have led modern firms to restructure and reengineer their processes. Strict structures with many hierarchical levels are now considered unsuitable practices. Instead, loose and flexible structures, less managerial levels and decentralized decision making result in better information flow and improved overall management. Under this new managerial approach, organizations have and are continuing to restructure work around teams rather than individual jobs [1]. The use of teams has expanded dramatically in response to competitive challenges and organizational needs of flexibility and adaptation [2]. A great volume of academic research has focused on the issues of team productivity and team efficiency and their relationship to and effect on firm performance. Furthermore, a number of parameters and criteria have been studied that seem to affect team productivity and team performance. Some of the most important are team characteristics [3], team diversity [4], the importance of clear goals [5], and team composition [6, 7]. The latter factor, team composition, has been studied extensively [8,9,10,11,12,13,14], emphasizing on issues such as the validity of selection methods used and the characteristics that are taken into account in the selection process. Team member selection depends on the firm’s specific targets, the availability of means and the individual preferences. Highlighting the complexity of this problem, it should be considered in its multi dimensions. Apart from organizational psychology field, operational research can provide an insight [15]. Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) methods and fuzzy logic ideally cope with the problem, given that they consider many criteria at the same time, with various weights, having the potential to reflect at a very satisfactory degree the vague – most of the times – preferences of the decision makers (DMs). The rest of the paper is organized as follows: Section II presents the proposed approach to support the decision making, initially providing a short review of the use of TOPSIS and then describing the steps of the algorithm. Section III briefly presents an illustrative example of the proposed approach and finally, limitations and future steps and research challenges are discussed. II. PROPOSED APPROACH In this paper, a new technique, based on fuzzy TOPSIS is considered, incorporating the veto threshold as the ultimate reference point for the decision. TOPSIS [16] has been used in a number of personnel selection problems [17,18,19]. In these, group decision making and fuzzy environment are the key features of the framework under which the decision is supported. Other applications of the method lie among the several aspects of classical business, such as marketing, supply chain, manufacturing as well as the high-tech contemporary problems. Some indicative recent studies are the following: In manufacturing sector, Wang et al. [20] and Chen et al. [21] dealt with the supplier selection problem. The latter proposed a simplified parameterized metric distance to calculate the distance between each point and fuzzy Positive Ideal Solution (PIS) and fuzzy Negative Ideal Solution (NIS). Perçin [22] presented the employment of a new hierarchical fuzzy TOPSIS approach to evaluate the most suitable business process outsourcing (BPO) decision and Bottani and Rizzi [23] presented a TOPSIS-based approach for the selection and ranking of the most suitable 3PL service provider, while Shyjith et al. [24] focused on the use of AHP and TOPSIS to select an optimum maintenance strategy for a textile industry. Since high technology has entered the Proceedings of the 2009 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics San Antonio, TX, USA - October 2009 978-1-4244-2794-9/09/$25.00 ©2009 IEEE 4704