Soung Hie Kim

Knowledge based decision making on higher level strategic concerns: system dynamics approach

In recognizing knowledge as a new resource in gaining organizational competitiveness, knowledge management suggests a method in managing and applying knowledge for improving organizational performance. Much knowledge management research has focused on identifying, storing, and disseminating process related knowledge in an organized manner. Applying knowledge to decision making has a significant impact on organizational performance than solely processing transactions for knowledge management. In this research, we suggest a method of knowledge-based decision-making using system dynamics, with an emphasis to strategic concerns. The proposed method transforms individual mental models into explicit knowledge by translating partial and implicit knowledge into an integrated knowledge model. The scenario-based test of the organized knowledge model enables decision-makers to understand the structure of the target problem and identify its basic cause, which facilitates effective decision-making. This method facilitates the linkage between knowledge management initiatives and achieving strategic goals and objectives of an organization.

A methodology of constructing a decision path for IT investment

Abstract Information Technology (IT) may be used for organizational efficiency, but should also be flexible to adapt to the rapidly changing competitive business environment. In competitive business circumstances, management continually asks: (1) How flexible must the firm be in investing in IT in order to meet unknown business needs in the future? At the same time, how efficient must the firm be in order to meet current business needs?; (2) How well must the firm align its business strategy with IT investment in order for it to support its strategic goals?; (3) how to construct a decision path for IT investments with respect to flexibility, efficiency and alignment between business strategy and IT investments? Although many researchers have struggled to answer these questions, they generally provide no means for incorporating these factors into the IT investment decision process. This paper suggests a method that identifies the degree of flexibility required (α-value), and accounts for and incorporates the α-value in making IT investments. The proposed method is based on a product development method called Quality Function Deployment (QFD). It will be applied to a real case of the “H-company” in Korea to validate and evaluate the proposed methodology.

Dominance, potential optimality, imprecise information, and hierarchical structure in multi-criteria analysis

Incorporating the imprecision of both weights and values into multi-attribute value theory brings us some computational difficulties in evaluating alternatives to be considered. For instance, we involve treating a non-linear programming problem because of non-linear forms of objectives or constraints to represent inner product forms of imprecisely known weights and values. In this paper, we thus develop a technique to translate such non-linear programming problems into ordinary linear programming equivalents. Note that there exits an earlier method similar to those developed in the present paper. However, that method has a limitation where it is assumed that there exists at least one alternative that has the only value of unity to be maximal in the corresponding attribute. This limitation is removed in the present article and, further, an extension is made to handle hierarchical structures.

Identification of inefficiencies in an additive model based IDEA (imprecise data envelopment analysis)

We employ an additive data envelopment analysis (DEA) model and assume, without loss of generality, all the input-output data are known in the form of arbitrary linear inequalities. This is referred to as an additive imprecise DEA (IDEA) model that involves treating a non-linear programming problem. The non-linear model is then transformed into a linear programming equivalent by methods we present in this paper. To achieve the purpose of this paper which is the identification of specific inefficiencies for the decision making units (DMUs) under consideration, we develop a two-stage method. In the first stage, we obtain an aggregated measure of inefficiencies from solving the linear version of the additive IDEA model. We then retrieve exact data based upon the optimal solutions obtained in the first stage. These exact data retrieved are then used in the next stage which implies that an ordinary additive DEA model is constructed. We can thus obtain the specific inefficiencies in terms of slacks as well as peer groups and scale sizes for every DMU to be considered.

Use of multi-attribute decision analysis for designing operations system framework in telecommunications management network

Abstract This paper is concerned with the design of an Operations System (OS) framework for implementing a proper telecommunications network in Korea Telecom. Since several types of OS frameworks are under consideration, the telecommunication network manager should now choose the best alternative for use later in establishing the infrastructure of operations systems. The decision making is done in this paper by means of a Multi-Attribute Decision-Making (MADM) analysis. A point to be noted in the present case is that the decision relevant information such as attribute weights and values of alternatives are not known exactly. Rather, these are to be taken in the form of rankings and/or bounds. To deal with such incomplete information, we employ a mathematical programming model-based MADM approach to the choice of an optimal OS framework design. This approach enables us to check dominance of alternatives and to obtain a set of non-dominated alternatives from evaluating five alternatives in reference to Telecommunications Management Network (TMN) standards. Scope and purpose Telecommunications Management Network (TMN) can be stated as a globalized and unified skeleton to meet the advanced operational environments of telecommunications networks and to handle heterogeneous and complex network elements. Although there are various subjects that should be addressed to accomplish TMN, we confine our attention to dealing with one important subject, design of an Operations System (OS) framework. This is necessary to manage telecommunications resources including networks in effective manner and for use as guidance in developing individual operations systems and in constructing a network management center. Several types of OS frameworks have been suggested by TMN standards. It is hence needed to evaluate each of these OS frameworks and then to choose an appropriate one in Korean TMN situation. Since this evaluation involves multiple criteria (or attributes), it is realized in this paper by a Multi-Attribute Decision-Making (MADM) analysis approach. The decision relevant information such as trade-off weights and individual criterion values are elicited from expert opinions which, however, is rather incomplete than exact numerical values. The decision making process with the incompletely identified information is presented in this paper.