Exploring the dark side of multi-criteria supplier evaluation/selection problem: An ethical perspective

In this study, the issue of unethical performance of suppliers (generally, agent, service provider, etc.) has been explored from another perspective. So, if a supplier isn&t able to get logical output from logical input (lower efficiency), not only it causes misbehavior from economical point of view, but also, this action is considered unethical in the society in an extended scale (in other words, is the company making the best use of the inputs [or resources]?. In this study, we called this phenomenon as an unethical performance. In continuation, we propose a new TOPSIS-based algorithm to resolve this problem. So that, conventional TOPSIS uses extended TOPSIS model results as input. Further, the proposed method has a capability to identify a measure of unethical performance (as an independent criterion [cost type], called the un-ethical factor, which can be used as input in the decision matrix and finally preference ordering step) with input and output system balancing. In addition, in this model cost and benefit criteria play the role of input and output respectively. As a result, the supplier with high ethical performance measure, get a higher score and vice-versa. Finally, a numerical example is given to demonstrate the feasibility of the developed method.