DECISION MAKING ON HUMAN RESOURCE CAPACITY IN THE HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS

Human resource capacity has become a critical issue in human resource management (HRM) at public universities and other higher education institutions (HEIs) as a result of governments’ decisions influenced by recession. The quality of decision making in human resource management is a key to organizational success, especially in a HE systems where legal requirements and administrative rules often lead to the inflexibility and rigidity and the budget for hiring or promoting employers is restricted.

Key factors that make decision making on human resources in HE difficult are: complexity, weak structure and interdependence and decision making at multiple levels in the hierarchy (national, university, faculty/institute, department/division, a personal level). The criteria by which it is possible to describe alternatives for making decisions on human resource capacity in HE have both qualitative and quantitative characteristics. Based on these characteristics of decision making in HRM in high education, we have used the multicriteria decision making method called the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) for developing model for ranking the candidate for job position and/or promotion. Using the AHP for decision making on human resources enables problem structuring, multiple criteria decision making, group decision making and comparison of qualitative and quantitative criteria by using the same scale.

Decision making on human resources in higher education is extremely difficult due to the high competition between competent teaching staff with doctoral degree, and on other hand a limited number of academic positions, especially when two or more candidates are applying for the same job position in a process of their promotion. Due to the large number of candidates who meet the minimum legal requirements for the same job position, there is a need for developing model with additional criteria for ranking the candidates.

In this paper the AHP model for decision making on the best candidate for the job position is presented. The model is developed based on the results of qualitative analysis, interviews with managers at HEIs and group decision making. The weights of criteria are calculated based on the judgments of managers and professors at HEIs. The developed AHP model can be adopted and used for decision making on specific problems in human resource management.