A priori ordering protocols to support consensus-building in multiple stakeholder contexts

In a complex social, political, economic, technological, and/or environmental context, corporate, military, government, and other organizations are often faced with collective decision-making situations. The rationale for group decision exercises is that the judgment of many will usually prove superior to the judgment of one. However, it has been shown that collective decision exercises are often highly dependent on matters of perspective, values and opinion, all of which – being essentially subjective in nature – are beyond the reach of existing formal decision technology. Furthermore, it can be expected that many collective decision exercises – particularly those of strategic import – will not lend themselves to the quantitative analysis instruments that have long dominated the management and decision science repertoire. This does not, however, mean that they must remain entirely and forever outside the bounds of scientific rationality. The ordering protocols which are currently available do not have enough technical mechanics to be relied upon to bring us to any satisfying resolution of a priori disputation. Hence, we propose an a priori ordering reference model that might support consensus-building in a multiple stakeholders context. In order to detect whether the subjective arguments are products of proper reasons or merely instances of raw rhetoric and to suggest how any logical or syntactical flaws might best be repaired, we propose logical ordering facilities and protocols for integrating procedural and instrumental provisions for a group-decision process with two lines of technical innovation: the superimpositional ordering function and the logical ordering support facilities.