Because of recent increases in student numbers, East University has to decide whether to relocate from its existing campus at Byron Avenue to a new campus at Beach Park, a green field site. The senior...

Because of recent increases in student numbers, East University has to decide whether to relocate from its existing campus at Byron Avenue to a new campus at Beach Park, a green field site. The senior managers of the university have to agree on which course of action to recommend to the Governing Body. The main criteria to be used in the decision are the cost of developing the site, working conditions for staff and students, the public image of the university, scope for further expansion in the future, accessibility to public transport facilities and reduction in road congestion. To provide a formal structure to the decision and a defensible rationale, the Simple Multi-attribute Rating Technique (SMART) was used by each manager to determine his or her perception of the relative importance of the criteria listed above and how well the two options performed on these criteria. For each manager this yielded a score for each course of action (for example, the University President’s scores were ‘Stay at Byron Avenue’: 65.1, ‘Move to Beach Park’: 34.9). For each option the scores for all the senior managers were averaged and the results are shown below:

Mean score

Stay at Byron Avenue: 57.8

Move to Beach Park: 42.2

These results were in complete contrast to the prevailing views expressed at the previous day’s meeting of the senior managers when there was apparent enthusiasm, particularly from the President, for the move to Beach Park. Discuss possible reasons for the discrepancy between the model’s recommendation and the view of the senior managers which was apparent at the last meeting.