On Application of Ordered Fuzzy Numbers in Ranking Linguistically Evaluated Negotiation Offers

The main purpose of this paper is to investigate the application potential of ordered fuzzy numbers (OFN) to support evaluation of negotiation offers. The Simple Additive Weighting (SAW) and the Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) methods are extended to the case when linguistic evaluations are represented by OFN. We study the applicability of OFN for linguistic evaluation negotiation options and also provide the theoretical foundations of SAW and TOPSIS for constructing a scoring function for negotiation offers. We show that the proposed framework allows us to represent the negotiation information in a more direct and adequate way, especially in ill-structured negotiation problems, allows for holistic evaluation of negotiation offers, and produces consistent rankings, even though new packages are added or removed. An example is presented in order to demonstrate the usefulness of presented fuzzy numerical approach in evaluation of negotiation offers.