Extended lexicographic goal programming: a unifying approach

This article starts reviewing the satisficing philosophy of Goal Programming (GP) and interpreting their solutions from the point of view of the utility theory. This interpretation leads to a very general optimisation structure called Extended Lexicographic Goal Programming (ELGP). It is then demonstrated that there are a significant number of Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) approaches that, from a logical point of view, can be reduced to the ELGP structure. The paper ends assessing the theoretical and practical advantages of the proposed unified approach. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.