Riding with the Surging Tide: A Review of MCDM’s Evolution

Multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) is a sub-discipline of operations research aimed at evaluating alternatives in consideration of various criteria. It is used by practically everyone in their daily lives and professional settings. Seeing the great value of MCDM, we conduct a comprehensive review to propel its innovation and development forward. Compared with any other reviews, we do not focus on introducing its methods, but on tracing its evolution and characteristics. As a general rule, every discipline has its own developing laws. They can be understood on various levels and can point out the direction the discipline is heading for. We firmly believe that our work can bring insight into MCDM’s frontiers and trend, which can eventually provide guidance on how to conduct the future research. In the first half of the paper, we investigate MCDM’s paradigm through literature review and colloquially divide its story into four stages: the Stone Age, the Iron Age, the Industrial Age and the New Stage. The first three stages symbolise its debut, growth and prosperity. Each one has distinctive thoughts, techniques and application, and to some extent hints the major works of the next stage. Since the turn of the 21st century, the paradigm has been once again experiencing dramatic changes, suggesting that it is on the threshold of a new era. Thus, in the second half of the work, a bibliometric analysis of the present stage ensues. Put simply, we take a global view of the stage by visualizing the stage’s publication quantity, publication distribution, and research categories. Then we design a snowballing co-citation method to explore its movements. The results demonstrate that MCDM is a dynamic, worldwide study for which China is the most productive country and the USA plays a pivot role in scholar communication. Method reviews, straightforward methods and MCDM-oriented fuzzy sets are predominant frontiers. The application, however, always changes with the requirements of the times. Now, it mainly refers to energy, environment, and supplier selection, while issues like sociology, tourism, education, etc. also emerge at a fast speed. Apart from this, experts have gradually shaken off the fetters of the traditional research style and are increasingly willing to structure methods and select application areas with a more personal touch. In the future, how to improve reviews, methods and fuzzy sets, how to understand and draw inspirations from society needs, and how experts can tailor MCDM to accommodate specific problems might be the pressing concerns.