Multicriteria decision analysis tool for faculty performance evaluation in higher education institutions

Abstract

Higher education institutions (HEIs), which are the major economic drivers in a nation, rely on their faculty for quality. The quality of faculty performance is assessed through performance appraisal methods. Performance appraisal methods help management assess the performance of employees and further the scope of improvement. Traditional methods of performance evaluation based on quantitative data involve more mathematical calculations than scientific approaches. The drawback of these methods is that they consider overall scores and not the individual factors of performance. This is exceptionally relevant when there are multiple disciplines in HEIs. In this study, the Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) model using MACBETH is used to explore its usefulness in explicitly dealing with the trade-offs between performance measures, making the process of performance measurement and management more transparent and defendable. Faculty performance across different disciplines was considered in this study, and faculty performance was evaluated using the MACBETH score. The advantage of MACBETH is that weight can be assigned to specific criteria, and accordingly, analysis can be carried out. Based on which criteria are assigned the highest weight, that factor is considered for the final output. In this study, the results obtained showed significant differences in the performance rankings of the faculty members when compared to those of the traditional methods, suggesting that the FSTs are useful tools for performing performance appraisals.