Abstract:
To exploit market opportunities, disparate enterprises can pool their core
competencies to form a temporary organisation. This inter-organisational
collaboration of enterprises is commonly referred to as a virtual
enterprise (VE). However, the VEs’ partner selection problems influence
their overall performance. Due to the limited construction-specific
studies on the evaluation and selection of partners, the current research
sought to address this knowledge gap by investigating the partner
selection problem. The partners comprising 10 construction companies
carrying out project tasks for a large building in Nairobi, Kenya, were
evaluated. Data were collected using a sequential mixed-methods
approach consisting of a focus group interview, questionnaires and
algorithms. The study proposed the use of the partner selection and
performance evaluation technique. This technique combines fuzzy
approximate reasoning with the conventional analytic hierarchy process
algorithm, designed to deal with imprecise evaluators’ judgments. A
multi-agent systems approach was chosen to simulate VEs. Results show
that the chosen techniques are both efficient and effective. In particular,
the reduced group fuzzy analytic hierarchy process reduces the number
of pairwise comparisons required when comparing a large number of
attributes. Application to the construction management domain, in
particular, is germane to the research.
