Sustainability 2022 , 14 , 2619
5of 16
prevalent in biorefineries, several specific challenges, advantages, and disadvantages of respective allocation methods can be identified. These often lead to a lack of consensus in practice [14]. Allocation method choices can significantly influence the outcome of LCAs; this was demonstrated by Hermansson et al. (2020), who applied twelve different allocation methods to a study case on lignin (climate impact). 2.3. Strategic Decision-Making Process and Managerial Impact Currently, the issue of managerial impact on decision-making is being studied in many disciplines. Recent research in the field of investment decision-making suggests that “human” aspects of decision-making [41], including the decision-makers’ emotional acumen (e.g., [42]), are playing a significant role. The importance of the nature of human action has also been noted in studies on corporate environmental and sustainability related decision- making [24,43]. Schaltenbrand et al. (2018, pp. 129–130) stated “in an ideal world, managers would make decisions based on what is purely relevant to the situation at hand. They would initiate the decision making process by filtering out all irrelevant matter to prevent any form of partiality. Indeed, rooted in the view of homo economicus, the underlying assumption in corporate decision-making is that of managerial impartiality; decisions are made without the influence of any irrelevant matter. However, corporate decision making is more of an interpretive endeavor rather than an analytic computation.” Overall, this statement also indicates that the managers’ decision-making is affected by numerous issues. Despite the fact that the roles of individual managers and their interactions with the surrounding environments have increased in importance in many fields, the underlying determinants that affect managerial decisions in many contexts are still poorly understood [44]. 2.4. Assessment of Allocation Preferences To assess the allocation preferences of practitioners, a multicriteria decision-making approach was chosen. The AHP was developed by Thomas L. Saaty in the 1970s [45]. Saaty emphasized the importance of structuring decisions and accomplished this by arranging complex problems into a hierarchical structure: He placed an overall goal at the top, ranking the criteria and subcriteria below this, and placed the alternatives representing possible choices near the bottom [45,46]. The pairwise comparisons of (sub-)criteria and alternatives represent core elements of the AHP, whereby a rating scale from 1 to 9 was proposed by Saaty [45,46]; this scheme is illustrated in Table 1.
Table1. Applied judgment scale (adapted from [45,46]).
Intensity of Importance
Definition
Explanation
1
Equal importance
Two activities contribute equally to the objective Experience and judgment slightly favor one activity over another Experience and judgment strongly favor one activity over another An activity is strongly favored, and its dominance demonstrated in practice The evidence favoring one activity over another provides the highest possible order of affirmation
3
Weak/Moderate importance of one over another
5
Essential or strong importance
7
Very strong/Demonstrated importance
9
Absolute/Extreme importance
If activity i has one of the above numbers assigned to it when compared with activity j, then j has the reciprocal value when compared with i
Reciprocals
Applications of AHP are manifold and have been reviewed by Sipahi and Timor [47] and Ho and Ma [48]. The former noted that the use of AHP has increased significantly in various application areas, such as manufacturing, environmental management and
Made with FlippingBook - Online magazine maker