Subject Matter Expert (SME) Management Strategy for Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM): A Case Study of Hierarchical Decision Model (HDM)

Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) have been filling the void of the knowledge gap since ancient times through their skills and expertise in one or more fields. Multicriteria Decision Making (MCDM) is a research tool that relies on expert judgment and allows one to take a decision when the final decision depends on various criteria and sub-criteria, many of which could be at odds. The ultimate success of the MCDM tool is contingent to a large extent on the management of SMEs that may involve preparing for communication with research subjects, finding SMEs, taking consent for participation, selecting and organizing panels, interacting and collaborating for validation, disagreement, inconsistency, developing desirability curves, evaluating technologies in terms of desirability curves, and finally, triangulation. The research discusses the process of managing SMEs considering the case of the Hierarchical Decision Model (HDM) used for assessing the Market Diffusion Potential (MDP) of Energy-Efficient (EE) technologies. Each section describes the process of managing SMEs from a theoretical perspective and discusses how it is implemented in practice considering the case of HDM for MDP assessment. Throughout the process, experts are consulted in every single step to make the outcome credible, valid, reliable, and authentic. It is a one-stop reference and guide for managing SMEs in MCDM.