• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.39 no.2
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• pp.145-162
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• 2020

This study examines problems with using the conventional analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method and proposes a method of weight adjustment as a modification of AHP. AHP is a method for transforming complex decision problems into a hierarchal structure, which is composed of elements in the upper and lower levels and then using pairwise comparisons to evaluate these elements and subsequently to obtain their relative weights. The elements' relative importance is reliable if the elements in the lower hierarchical levels (sub factors) that comprise each element in the upper hierarchical level (primary factor) are equal in number. In other words, if the number of sub factors is different for each primary factor, a serious error is expected as a result. Therefore, this study proposes a modification of AHP that can avoid such an error when AHP is used. Specifically, an error that arises from different number of sub factors (matrix size) can be overcome by making the number of sub factors identical for each primary factor. The resulting model has been validated through the applications in different AHP hierarchical structures.