Heterogeneous large-scale group decision making with subgroup leaders: An application to the green supplier selection

Under the mainstream development trend of energy conservation, environmental protection and sustainability, green supplier selection has become a common concern of many enterprises and scholars. Meanwhile, more and more attention has been paid to the problem of large-scale group decision making (LSGDM) which requires the participation of multiple decision makers (DMs). As the factors to be considered in selecting the optimal green supplier become increasingly complex, DMs with different professional backgrounds may give different forms of assessment. Therefore, it is of great significance to study the application of heterogeneous LSGDM in green supplier selection (GSS). In this article, a new heterogeneous LSGDM method based on subgroup leaders (SLs) is proposed. First, a novel determination method of SLs is presented based on the interaction between DMs. Then, according to the heterogeneous preference information of SLs, the solution method of the collective priority vector is given, and then an approach to determine the overall consensus level is presented by considering the consensus degree within and between subgroups. Subsequently, a consensus building method is proposed to manage the non-cooperative behaviour of DMs and reduce the divergences among DMs. Finally, an example of GSS is given to demonstrate the applicability and effectiveness of the proposed method.